I don't want to belabor the point, nor do I want this to drag on forever. Quite simply put, this opinion gathering tool is in the form of a vote, but it is not binding. It is only a way to show your preference. Please put a number of the order of preference that you have for what to do with Fortress. If any of the options is completely disagreeable put a -1 next to it.
[1] Fortress stays in Avalon with maintenance [2] Fortress moves to incubator for TLP [3] Fortress moves to D-Haven [4] Fortress moves to XXX (enter your choice here) [-1] Fortress is nuked and users forced to migrate
I have been very bad about finding time to contribute much lately. But Fortress is
an integral part of several projects that I use at a number of customer sites as well
as for in house projects. At this point it is a great light weight container that does
everything I need.
It sounds like there are some issues with getting it "stable" build-wise again. But
at one point it had been quite stable and any issues must have come from the move
from Ant to Maven??
In my experience, Fortress appears to be a very stable option. The fact that many
of those who have been involved in ECM, Fortress, Phoenix development have left
for a number of reasons is a great shame. And given that the remaining avalon
members have been concentrating on Merlin, I can understand the desire to move
in that direction. But to our users, Avalon is a tool that is used to to make the projects
that they are interested in developing possible. We need to provide a consistent API
and a reliable future if we expect those users to stick around.
If Merlin does not fit on top of the contracts that we have released in the past. And I
mean that components can be used as is without any modification of their code. Then
I think we are doing a disservice to our user base.
I have not spent much time with Merlin, but from all of the posts it sounds like a move
from Fortress to Merlin would be far from trivial. My applications all consist of a
bootstrap main which starts Fortress. Fortress is then in charge of running all of the
components. I make heavy use of the lookup("role/hint") syntax, which does not
appear to be supported by Merlin. If I could swap out Fortress for Merlin and have
all of my components just work. Then I would have complaints. But as is Fortress
is the only thing that can be used without investing lots of time upgrading a large number
of components to work with either scheme. They would have to work with both as
it is not feasible to upgrade every single app that makes use of my core utility
components.
I would like to see Fortress stay around in a form that can be modified if any
problems are encountered. I don't like the option of a final snapshot of the code
at all as that would effectively mean that I would have to start my own CVS
repository to track all of the future changes myself. :-P That would be foolish
as other users would be having to do the same thing...
To our users, Avalon is ECM, Phoenix and to a lesser degree Fortress. If Merlin
is branching from that then it makes more sense to branch Merlin off on its own than
to kill the existing Avalon APIs....
Having a merlin.apache.org along side avalon.apache.org would also remove a lot of
the tension that have been in this project over the last year or two. By doing so,
hopefully some of the original committers would come back and both groups could
go on their happy way. Am I dreaming?
I would really love to get more involved again. But frankly every time I try it seems
like a majority of the messages are bickering and I just don't have the energy for it.
Avalon goes on the back burner for a couple more months until I decide to try reading
posts again... There appears to be two clearly defined groups in Avalon. Sad as it
may be, it may be time for a break up. It seems like that would be best for our users,
and best for everyone who simply wants to get to work. I can't imagine that anyone
really enjoys all of this bickering.
Cheers, Leif
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