Mike Dewhirst wrote:
> I am working on the same project as Mark Mclaren, and have some additional questions
>regarding Struts:
>
> 1. Does anyone have an idea of how many people are developing/using Struts?
>
It is pretty hard to know for sure on an open source project, but the subscriber count
on STRUTS-USER, as of this morning, is 979. It's been growing rapidly, especially
over the last couple of months.
>
> I have checked the bug list and indeed it is very small, but I want to know that
>that is due to product stability, not because of the lack of users. Don't mean to be
>rude, just cautious.
>
I would do exactly the same thing in your shoes.
I'm biased (being the primary author), but from what I have seen so far the bug list
is small primarily because of stability. One of the huge benefits of open source
development is "distributed debugging" (lots of eyes looking at the code and trying
things out). In the eight months since Struts was started, there
have been *lots* of bug reports (and associated fixes) resulting from this.
>
> 2. Are there any European users?
A perusal of the mailing list archives indicates that interest in Europe is quite high
-- I imagine a lot of this is because of the fact that Struts promotes i18n as a first
class notion, instead of something you bolt on later.
>
> 3. Does anyone run Struts on commercial servers, e.g. BEA's Weblogic?
Yes, there are Struts users on Weblogic and many other server platforms -- the
installation docs in the Struts nightly builds have been recently enhanced to include
notes about the experience of using Struts in such environments.
One thing that has been quite interesting (to me) is that Struts is often used as a
"servlet/JSP compatibility" test by its users, and has triggered service pack updates
on quite a few server platforms to improve their conformance to the servlet and JSP
specs :-).
>
> 4. What is the envisaged frequency of update releases? (just a rough idea, e.g.
>every 2 quarters, years, etc.)
>
We haven't tried to define a release time frame after 1.0 yet, but here's what I
envision:
* Bug fix updates (1.0.x) will happen as often as needed to deal
with any bugs that are found after 1.0 is released.
* The timeframe for 1.1 depends on how many developers volunteer
to help out (the current 1.1 TODO list is in the documentation bundle).
As significant features get completed, there will be a vote on the
developer list to release updates with new functionality -- I would imagine
this would happen at least every six months, or faster if more people
are willing to participate.
* To the maximum degree feasible, applications should be able to
depend on APIs and functionality throughout the 1.x family of
releases.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!
>
> Mike Dewhirst
>
Craig McClanahan
