Bernd Fondermann wrote on: 29 January 2008 08:46: > Hi, > > Since we have so many road blocks on our track ahead... why don't we > simply start a rewrite? > > Before we all throw in our -1's, let's just think about it > for a minute... > > Truely, coding the current stuff is _no_fun_. How do we expect this > project to gain track if nobody is volunteering for coping > with this pain? > We have _not_enough_long_term_committers able and willing to > deal with > legacy stuff. The world has _moved_on_. Can't we build > something which > is comprehensible? The whole backend repository architecture and how > things are propagated, well, I don't get it and I think it'd > better be > replaced. And I don't even figure out how to replace stuff there. > Whenever I look at this stuff I start with... putting it away. > Many important features from the last couple of months could > (IMHO) not > be integrated seamlessly. Because current JAMES is not easily > extensible > and generally does not welcome changes. We have some cool ideas like > async handlers etc. And people invest their time trying to > fit it into > the current architecture, where this energy is better spent > writing even > more cool features and making the server unbreakable. We have tight > integration with JavaMail. This alone has probably cost us so > much time. > > (Re-reading the last paragraph, it seems a little bit like a > rant to me, > don't you think? But I feel better now. Anyway...)
Not a rant, simply a venting of the frustrations all developers feel at times. Sure, with unlimited resources we could craft a better solution for todays challenges starting with a clean slate, decanting all of the knowledge captured in the current codebase in a cleaner, better way. But consider the lesson of the old joke of the lost traveller who asks a passing stranger how to get to his intended destination and is told, "Well, If I were you I wouldn't start from here". Sometimes we have no realistic alternative but to start from where we are. > Yes, we have a responsability, to make things easy for our users, > support migrations, be defensive with changing APIs and so > on. But how > does that help if we are unable to push this dinosaur forward? Or > foremost responsability is to make this a fun place to be, > make people > contribute and hand out fine releases. I think we have come to a > situation where we might be better off with creating > something new from > scratch. The efforts of you, Robert and others have shown that we can make progress through evolution without revolution. I think the trick is to find a way of folding these efforts back into a releasable codebase is the way forward. This is being discussed elsewhere on this list, "[PLANNING] Road map - lets find some consensus on .... release contents ...", and is preferable, not least because it is realistically doable. What things do you feel are truly road blocked by core architecural issues in the codebase as opposed to a frustrating lack of developer activity? Such core architecural issues could be added to the roadmap as must do's to resolve so that they are generally understood by all. Maybe then, some would find "this a fun place to be" in resolving them. > > Bernd Cheers -- Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
