Dear community,
Several users have requested our vision on what to do next now 1.2 is out. After several months of hard work for getting
1.2 out of the door and thinking about what next, the core contributors
have come to the following roadmap. We asked you previously about what
the future should hold regarding Java 5 and the constructor change
(search on gmane to learn more about that one).
The votes weren't conclusive, so we could go into any direction. So we figured we could go with a quicky for
the constructor change (1.3) and then move onwards to 2.0. This was the
sentiment a couple of months ago. Now that we had some time to think it
through, we feel that we should not do a quick constructor change
release. This would mean supporting 3 - 4 framework versions: (
1.1), 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0.
You can build great applications using
Wicket 1.2 and we think that we will be supporting 1.2 for quite a
while. Many components will be created and additional packages upgraded
to Wicket 1.2
. This warrants a stable 1.2 version for a long time. The constructor
change, although necessary for future development, will break a lot of
stuff.
Considering
that we have a small team, and can only support so much, we don't see a
future in supporting 1.2, 1.3 (constructor + java 1.4) and 2.0
(constructor + java 5). Therefore we have come to the conclusion that
our roadmap should look like the following:
Wicket 2.0
- non backportable features:
- constructor change
- Java 5
- other features and components, such as convertor API simplification
Wicket 1.2.x/1.3
- backported features from
2.0 branch
- new components and features (will be available on 2.0 as well)
-
*no* major api changes, such as the constructor change. Minor changes
to improve the life of the component developer may take place
(backport of convertor simplification)
Wicket 1.2.x releases will be drop-in compatible and contain
minor additions, and of course bug fixes, no changes to existing API's
unless warranted by a blocking bug.
If it's felt appropriate, a Wicket 1.3 release will be made, combining the 1.2 branch with selected backports from the 2.0/core branch. If this occurs, the 1.2.x branch will enter maintenance-mode,
i.e. supported for bug fixes only.
To
summarize: even though a lot of development will focus on Wicket 2.0,
Wicket 1.2 is not an end station. We will continue to provide support
and to evolve that branch.
As for a time table:
- wicket 2.0 is scheduled somewhere at the end of the coming summer
- wicket 1.2.1 is scheduled in about 1-3 weeks
- wicket 1.3 is not scheduled yet.
- the Wicket team
