Belated congrats on the WW2 release! I downloaded WebWork2 last night for the first time. I thought I'd look it over because I had some time and because I'd like to start using it in my apps. I have to say I'm not impressed. I'm know that WW2 is a good framework and I know the developers here are bright but I was most surprised at the documentation (or lack thereof) and overall polish. Most things won't be hard to fix and a little work will go a long way for the general quality of the release. Note - none of my comments are about the actual code so I'm not being critical of that.
1) First off, there's no README file?! I took a few mins and created one:
<http://jira.opensymphony.com/secure/ViewIssue.jspa?key=WW-470>
I might be missing something in there, if so just let me know and I can update it. Also, if something is totally wrong let me know - I just put together a few things that I thought every README should have.
2) I installed the demo app (the WAR) and it wasn't very impressive. I know behind the scenes it's impressive but the UI of the initial page was very unorganized. I took a stab at a new layout:
<http://jira.opensymphony.com/secure/ViewIssue.jspa?key=WW-468>
I think in the long term it'd be cool to clean up the demo pages themselves a little and also explain a bit better what exactly each demo does. I can file an issue for this.
3) The JavaDocs are pretty bad. A few choice examples:
* com.opensymphony.webwork.WebWorkStatics, com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.ServletDispatcher - no comments. Also a number of other core classes have little or no JavaDoc comments.
* 10 classes had comments of "DOCUMENT ME!"
* com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.ChartResult - class comments are: "bchoi To change the template for this generated type comment go to Window - Preferences - Java - Code Generation - Code and Comments"
* Javadoc title on main page is 'webwork' and not 'webwork2' - there are also no package level comments.
I don't mean to be picky or anal about this but I *know* this stuff isn't hard to do and it would make a huge difference in the overall quality of WW2. How can we expect people to convert from Struts if they can't understand the APIs?
I propose a major cleanup effort for the next release of WW2 on this stuff. I'd be happy to file issues too if you think that would help.
4) The release really needs a sample "HelloWorld" app. This would ideally be in a /demo/app dir of the distro and would include:
* build scripts
* prebuilt war
* overview docs
* source code - well documented
I think this would go a long way as some people just want to try playing with the new features. There was a Jira issue for this - what happened?
<http://jira.opensymphony.com/secure/ViewIssue.jspa?key=WW-248>
Let's open that sucker back up!
5) I'm not a fan of the wiki docs though they're better than nothing. I'll save that for another email. I think they just need some more polish & better organization.
There are a lot of talented developers here - let's kick some ass on these things and do better!
Regards, --Bill
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