I completely agree with what Sergio wrote: as a project/community, Freemarker can take any technical decision they consider the best for the project, including (but not limited to) deprecating an API or dropping support for a release branch. Of course, every project/community will have to find the right balance and take the best decision to minimize the pain to users and developers.
Jacopo On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 9:44 AM, Sergio Fernández <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Daniel, > > thanks for sharing your ideas with the community. I think I have three > different angles to reply you: > > 1) As a developer, I usually like the approaches of fresh starts, where you > can apply what you have learnt so far to design the best possible solution > without the need of keep legacy support. You may fail, and never get FM3 > released, which is fair enough; but the project will benefit from the > lessons learnt. > > 2) As a mentor, I fear that maintaining two parallel branches will be hard > with such small team. But I think that FM2 is stable enough to just require > minor bugfixes, focusing all project's effort in FM3. Then should be fine. > > 3) From the ASF point of view there is no issue at all. A project (or > podling) is completely autonomous to take the technical decision they > consider the best for the project. Saying that "one of the reasons FM was > accepted into the incubator is that existing Apache projects (and Apache > members) are relying on FM2" shouldn't be an impediment for the project to > evolve. Some project will keep using FM2, some other will move on to FM3; > as simple as that. > > Hope that helps. > > Cheers, > > > > On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Daniel Dekany <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > My goal with what I call "FreeMarker 3" is to mercilessly get things > > right, while re-using source code as much as possible. I don't want to > > change the "flavor" of FreeMarker, I mean, it should come with roughly > > the same features (even if modularized out), same core > > beliefs/paradigms (${noSuchVar} should be an error, etc.), and > > *similar* but not identical look-and-feel (though later I think a > > Velocity/WebMacro-like option would be desirable too). I would like to > > give up some dynamism for the sake of better toolability though. I > > also pant to give more focus to non-Web applications, such as source > > code generation, where white-space control is important. > > > > The political issue comes from that, I care about giving the best > > FM-ish template engine I can, and I don't want tradition to be in may > > way (that's what FM2 is for). After 12+ FM2 technical support and > > maintenance and accumulated wisdom that's what motivates me. (Yes, > > that's just me, but we know that the only hope for FM3 is that I > > bootstrap it with a lot of work, and only then there's a slight hope > > that others will join to that much more attractive branch.) And so, > > what if, me in agreement with others here think that, just as an > > example, `s?capFirst` and `s!default` are too weird, and `s|capFirst` > > and `s?:default` is a better compromise. Trivial change technically, > > not a paradigm shift at all, but for the outsider, it feels like a > > sharp change. Or, we decide that, if we forget the past for moment, > > FTLValue and FTLNumber are a better names than TemplateModel and > > TemplateNumberModel. Trivial change again, but very visible for the > > outsider. Or, a deeper change, we decide that #include sucks after all > > (hint: it does). And so on. These changes will pile up. Nobody would > > say a bad word about these if it's just yet another new template > > language (to die due to lack of attention), but if we "market" this as > > FreeMarker 3... is that OK to do? And is that OK for the ASF, because, > > one of the reasons FM was accepted into the incubator is that existing > > Apache projects (and Apache members) are relying on FM2. Well, they > > don't rely on FM3, and it's not yet proven that they will if there > > ever will be an FM3. > > > > What do you think? Can we (well, me initially, as I said) do this? > > > > -- > > Thanks, > > Daniel Dekany > > > > > > > -- > Sergio Fernández > Partner Technology Manager > Redlink GmbH > m: +43 6602747925 > e: [email protected] > w: http://redlink.co >
