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Posted to c-users@xalan.apache.org by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> on 2022/10/07 12:19:10 UTC
[VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Dear all,
It's been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [?xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes-there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer-so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome-I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don't leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I'm not sure if I'm formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I'm the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I'll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project's commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I'd like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: "Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters"
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I'm not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons-I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don't know the underlying codebase, and I can't do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don't have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I'm no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn't done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it's most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway's last work in 2012.
I don't personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I'm sure there are some users, there's next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I've made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don't see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn't support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough <de...@blough.us.INVALID>.
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:52:05AM -0700, Steven Hathaway wrote:
> Linux Distributions
> * Fedora (epel) continues to have xalan-c 1.12.0 for Centos-8-Stream
> and RHEL-8.
> * Debian-10 distributes the old xalan-c 1.11
>
Not that it really changes anything you have written, but FYI, Debian 11
is the current stable release, and carries xalan-c 1.12.
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough via c-users <c-...@xalan.apache.org>.
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:52:05AM -0700, Steven Hathaway wrote:
> Linux Distributions
> * Fedora (epel) continues to have xalan-c 1.12.0 for Centos-8-Stream
> and RHEL-8.
> * Debian-10 distributes the old xalan-c 1.11
>
Not that it really changes anything you have written, but FYI, Debian 11
is the current stable release, and carries xalan-c 1.12.
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net>.
Retirement of Xalan-C
a. Retire the project to the Attic (My Vote)
b. Keep the project going
I appreciate the work of Roger Leigh, William Blugh, and Gary Gregory on
Xalan-C as a project with little usage. My major work with xalan-c was
the release of 1.11. I don't have the time to mentor and implement
features such as:
* Caching standard documents instead of requiring internet access to
W3 repositories to support validation in absence of W3 internet access.
* Implementing additional date-time extensions based on a time
continuum number and adding a robust namespace plugin capability.
* Ensuring that the code base supports STL deprecation of features in
new C++ language implementations. This requires implementing new
templates in the low-level code base.
* The project relies on Xerces-C for the XML readers.
We don't have the contributors and committers for these issues. The
health of the related xerces-c project is also an issue.
The various commercial projects I helped maintain have discontinued
using xalan-c in their design and maintenance. I don't know of other
projects that incorporate xalan-c as a requirement.
Linux Distributions
* Fedora (epel) continues to have xalan-c 1.12.0 for Centos-8-Stream
and RHEL-8.
* Debian-10 distributes the old xalan-c 1.11
The mail lists have seen virtually no traffic regarding the use and
issues of Xalan-C.
As for going forward, my vote is for (a).
a. Retire the project to the Attic
b. Keep the project going
Sincerely,
Steven J. Hathaway
On 10/15/2022 4:42 AM, Gary Gregory wrote:
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of
> involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that
> would be (a) for me.
>
> Gary
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this
> subject. There is a related discussion about this on the
> Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach
> a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which
> can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the
> source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to
> the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there
> are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing
> any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are
> still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little
> prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself
> will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no
> time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to
> see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the
> mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and
> well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a
> library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but
> realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the
> project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote
> for (a).
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:*rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is,
> where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does
> not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it
> to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the
> project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released
> Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in
> October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had
> been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream
> distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows
> the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this
> release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the
> /sole/ committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J.
> Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng,
> Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal
> contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt,
> David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the
> /1.10/ release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then
> has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability
> work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different
> toolchains on different platforms and some documentation
> work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and
> nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different
> platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build
> on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to
> Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside
> essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other
> than myself
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed).
> One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr).
> This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of
> unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on
> a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I
> wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12
> release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying
> codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
> bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to
> do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using
> Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work
> and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation
> of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
> happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven
> J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement
> or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an
> active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And
> while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active
> engagement of users as a community.
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all
> contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made
> it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java
> libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
> critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the
> foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless
> there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C
> doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the
> current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we
> take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I
> think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end
> the project gracefully.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Thanks Steven!
Gary
On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 8:25 PM Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net> wrote:
>
> FYI:
>
> I am willing to stay on the Xalan PMC as a voting member when needed for
> quorum.
>
> Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@xalan.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@xalan.apache.org
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Thanks Steven!
Gary
On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 8:25 PM Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net> wrote:
>
> FYI:
>
> I am willing to stay on the Xalan PMC as a voting member when needed for
> quorum.
>
> Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@xalan.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@xalan.apache.org
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@xalan.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@xalan.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net>.
FYI:
I am willing to stay on the Xalan PMC as a voting member when needed for
quorum.
Steven J. Hathaway
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net>.
FYI:
I am willing to stay on the Xalan PMC as a voting member when needed for
quorum.
Steven J. Hathaway
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Roger that, hopefully sometime this week.
Gary
On Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 11:36 Bill Blough <de...@blough.us.invalid> wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Gary Gregory wrote:
> > I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we
> are
> > still dealing with Xalan-J.
>
> When you get around to moving Xalan-C to the attic, at that time, please
> also remove me from the Xalan project and PMC.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Roger that, hopefully sometime this week.
Gary
On Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 11:36 Bill Blough <de...@blough.us.invalid> wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Gary Gregory wrote:
> > I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we
> are
> > still dealing with Xalan-J.
>
> When you get around to moving Xalan-C to the attic, at that time, please
> also remove me from the Xalan project and PMC.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough <de...@blough.us.INVALID>.
Hi Gary,
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Gary Gregory wrote:
> I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are
> still dealing with Xalan-J.
When you get around to moving Xalan-C to the attic, at that time, please
also remove me from the Xalan project and PMC.
Thanks,
Bill
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for picking this up. I wasn’t sure if there were separate PMCs for the Java and C projects, so keeping makes sense if Xalan-J is continuing.
Should the project make a formal announcement of the retirement of Xalan-C to the Attic? Is that something you would pick up as part of moving it to the Attic?
As part of the work I was doing for Xalan-C, I was responsible for packaging it for software collections such as vcpkg and homebrew. I would like to retire these as well, and it would likely also make sense for Linux distributors to also phase out distribution of Xalan-C as well once it’s formally retired. Unless there are any major objections, I will proceed to remove them as part of winding up my involvement. It might be worth making that recommendation to distributors in any announcement we make.
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 17 October 2022 20:17
To: dev@xalan.apache.org
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are still dealing with Xalan-J.
Gaty
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 13:43 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Benjamin Beasley<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Bill Blough<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Biswapriyo Nath<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Kvarec Lezki<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
182 Roger Leigh<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
29 Steven J. Hathaway<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1. Retire the project to the Attic<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
2. Keep the project going<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Kind regards,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Roger<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
From: rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Future of xalan-c<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Dear all,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012. <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Kind regards,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Roger<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for picking this up. I wasn’t sure if there were separate PMCs for the Java and C projects, so keeping makes sense if Xalan-J is continuing.
Should the project make a formal announcement of the retirement of Xalan-C to the Attic? Is that something you would pick up as part of moving it to the Attic?
As part of the work I was doing for Xalan-C, I was responsible for packaging it for software collections such as vcpkg and homebrew. I would like to retire these as well, and it would likely also make sense for Linux distributors to also phase out distribution of Xalan-C as well once it’s formally retired. Unless there are any major objections, I will proceed to remove them as part of winding up my involvement. It might be worth making that recommendation to distributors in any announcement we make.
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 17 October 2022 20:17
To: dev@xalan.apache.org
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are still dealing with Xalan-J.
Gaty
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 13:43 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Benjamin Beasley<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Bill Blough<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Biswapriyo Nath<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1 Kvarec Lezki<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
182 Roger Leigh<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
29 Steven J. Hathaway<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
1. Retire the project to the Attic<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
2. Keep the project going<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Kind regards,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Roger<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
From: rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Future of xalan-c<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Dear all,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012. <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Kind regards,<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Roger<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough via c-users <c-...@xalan.apache.org>.
Hi Gary,
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Gary Gregory wrote:
> I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are
> still dealing with Xalan-J.
When you get around to moving Xalan-C to the attic, at that time, please
also remove me from the Xalan project and PMC.
Thanks,
Bill
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are
still dealing with Xalan-J.
Gaty
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 13:43 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final
> tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
>
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC
> chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would
> it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get
> dissolved entirely)?
>
>
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various
> distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify
> them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on
> the risks?
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 15 October 2022 12:42
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Cc:* c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement
> with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for
> me.
>
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by "Gary D. Gregory" <gg...@apache.org>.
This is a common refrain in the FOSS world: People get used to free software, free maintenance, don't get involved, and complain when things change.
This sounds to me like a call of action for you to survey the other free software you use and get involved; that or buy software ;-)
Gary
On 2022/10/19 07:13:24 Scott Furry wrote:
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement
> seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove
> online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was
> not pleased with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
> licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
> Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of
> various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the
> Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release
> iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to
> the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems
> focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache
> projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
> maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
> ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The
> notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in
> obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the
> 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
> compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in
> the future.
>
> /rant
> Scott
>
>
> On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
> >
> > Hi Gary,
> >
> > Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the
> > final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
> >
> > So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the
> > PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the
> > Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does
> > the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
> >
> > Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various
> > distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just
> > notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own
> > judgement on the risks?
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > *From:* Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> > *Sent:* 15 October 2022 12:42
> > *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org
> > *Cc:* c-users@xalan.apache.org
> > *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
> >
> > Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of
> > involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that
> > would be (a) for me.
> >
> > Gary
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > It’s been over three months since my original email on this
> > subject. There is a related discussion about this on the
> > Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach
> > a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
> >
> > I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which
> > can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> > icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> > <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> > There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the
> > source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the
> > maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are
> > no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any
> > maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still
> > present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect
> > of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be
> > leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of
> > the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to
> > it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> > gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken
> > impression that this is a project which is active and well
> > supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library
> > which new projects should be considering to use.
> >
> > This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
> >
> > $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
> >
> > 1 Benjamin Beasley
> >
> > 1 Bill Blough
> >
> > 1 Biswapriyo Nath
> >
> > 1 Kvarec Lezki
> >
> > 182 Roger Leigh
> >
> > 29 Steven J. Hathaway
> >
> > I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
> >
> > 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> > 2. Keep the project going
> >
> > I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but
> > realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the
> > project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote
> > for (a).
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> > *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> > *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> > *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is,
> > where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does
> > not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it
> > to the Attic?
> >
> > To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the
> > project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
> >
> > Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released
> > Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in
> > October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had
> > been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream
> > distributors.
> >
> > https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows
> > the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this
> > release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the
> > /sole/ committer for this release.
> >
> > The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J.
> > Hathaway being the principal contributor.
> >
> > The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N
> > Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> >
> > The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng,
> > Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal
> > contributors.
> >
> > The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt,
> > David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> >
> > The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
> >
> > * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the
> > /1.10/ release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then
> > has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability
> > work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> > * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> > essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different
> > toolchains on different platforms and some documentation
> > work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and
> > nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> > * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> > essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different
> > platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build
> > on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to
> > Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements
> > outside essential bugfixing.
> > * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> > * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> > * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> > sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other
> > than myself
> > (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed).
> > One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> > platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR
> > (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr).
> > This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of
> > unexpected subtleties.
> >
> > I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on
> > a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I
> > wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12
> > release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying
> > codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
> > bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to
> > do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using
> > Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> > maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work
> > and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation
> > of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
> > happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven
> > J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
> >
> > I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement
> > or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an
> > active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And
> > while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active
> > engagement of users as a community.
> >
> > I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> > medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all
> > contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made
> > it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java
> > libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
> > critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the
> > foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
> >
> > However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless
> > there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C
> > doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the
> > current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we
> > take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I
> > think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end
> > the project gracefully.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Roger
> >
>
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Thanks for sharing your journey and process with us Roger.
I hope this will give users out there a better understanding of how we got
here.
Gary
On Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 17:03 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
>
>
>
>
> We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to commit
> to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time donated or money
> to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job I maintained an
> application which was critically dependent upon Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when
> we found deficiencies and faults in it, in particular portability defects,
> my employer graciously permitted me to work on both codebases and provide
> the necessary fixes, including signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost
> for me to contribute to these projects was ultimately paid for by my
> employer, because it benefitted them to have supported libraries that
> worked on all of the platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus
> any needed security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I
> continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer actively
> involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or Xalan-C, and
> in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other libraries by one
> of my end users (which is reflective of people’s concern over the risk of
> using abandoned and unsupported libraries). So while altruism can go some
> way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I work on other projects from which
> I derive more benefit. I’m afraid to say that continuing to work on both
> projects costs me a great deal of time, for which I derive zero personal
> benefit, which is why it is time for me to cease participating in these
> projects and to work on others.
>
>
>
> None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the
> project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a
> lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau during
> which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are wound down.
> Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
>
>
>
> One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true
> maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using it and
> distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this one—it’s
> important that everyone understands the consequences of the change in
> status (even if that status is what was effectively the status quo for the
> best part of a decade). If the result of the discussion is that we end up
> with some new maintainers who make a genuine commitment to carrying the
> project forward, then I would be more than happy. If there are businesses
> or individuals who are dependent upon it for the continuation of their
> products and business continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt
> some consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to
> keep the project going.
>
>
>
> However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid as I
> said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest in XML and
> XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries and tools for
> performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in Xalan is not
> unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies to QtXmlPatterns.
> Look at
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged
> to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the CI
> and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s no
> actual development going on there either. Basically what I was doing with
> Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been dropped entirely. To
> be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT, then paying for Saxon is
> probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for having a library which is
> actually maintained and which also has the best XSLT support of all of the
> XSLT libraries available. If you are basing your business on this, then
> there isn’t really much of a choice to make here, the answer is obvious.
>
>
>
> I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the bazaar.
> Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from corporations,
> IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much later), but it looks
> like the vast majority of all of the development of these projects was done
> by developers working for IBM. I’m not sure that the projects ever had
> many significant contributions outside this effort from independent
> individual contributors for anything more substantial than small fixes.
> Individual volunteers generally want to work on interesting and fun stuff.
> Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C has been little more than hour after hour
> of boring maintenance work. Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going,
> testing the build system on multiple platforms, debugging and testing,
> reviewing, testing and applying patches applied to the various Linux and
> other distributions, plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun
> or rewarding, and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone
> to be doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to
> test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic
> infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a
> viable ongoing concern.
>
>
>
> There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a full-time
> job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free software and
> being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten obligations to satisfy.
> That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up with crippling RSI and
> massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my day job and tinker with
> some free software stuff on the side. Making a commitment to work on a
> project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with it ongoing obligations to do a
> lot of work on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner. I can’t continue
> to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C today has benefitted from the work I’ve
> done, without needing to contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C
> want the project to continue, then they will need to step up to do all this
> stuff themselves.
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 19 October 2022 08:13
> *To:* c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement
> seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online
> to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased
> with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
> licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
> Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of
> various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache
> Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE
> still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2
> plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I
> have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
> maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
> ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion
> of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity
> is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (
> https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
> compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the
> future.
>
>
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Thanks for sharing your journey and process with us Roger.
I hope this will give users out there a better understanding of how we got
here.
Gary
On Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 17:03 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
>
>
>
>
> We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to commit
> to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time donated or money
> to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job I maintained an
> application which was critically dependent upon Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when
> we found deficiencies and faults in it, in particular portability defects,
> my employer graciously permitted me to work on both codebases and provide
> the necessary fixes, including signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost
> for me to contribute to these projects was ultimately paid for by my
> employer, because it benefitted them to have supported libraries that
> worked on all of the platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus
> any needed security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I
> continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer actively
> involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or Xalan-C, and
> in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other libraries by one
> of my end users (which is reflective of people’s concern over the risk of
> using abandoned and unsupported libraries). So while altruism can go some
> way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I work on other projects from which
> I derive more benefit. I’m afraid to say that continuing to work on both
> projects costs me a great deal of time, for which I derive zero personal
> benefit, which is why it is time for me to cease participating in these
> projects and to work on others.
>
>
>
> None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the
> project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a
> lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau during
> which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are wound down.
> Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
>
>
>
> One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true
> maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using it and
> distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this one—it’s
> important that everyone understands the consequences of the change in
> status (even if that status is what was effectively the status quo for the
> best part of a decade). If the result of the discussion is that we end up
> with some new maintainers who make a genuine commitment to carrying the
> project forward, then I would be more than happy. If there are businesses
> or individuals who are dependent upon it for the continuation of their
> products and business continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt
> some consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to
> keep the project going.
>
>
>
> However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid as I
> said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest in XML and
> XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries and tools for
> performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in Xalan is not
> unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies to QtXmlPatterns.
> Look at
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged
> to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the CI
> and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s no
> actual development going on there either. Basically what I was doing with
> Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been dropped entirely. To
> be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT, then paying for Saxon is
> probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for having a library which is
> actually maintained and which also has the best XSLT support of all of the
> XSLT libraries available. If you are basing your business on this, then
> there isn’t really much of a choice to make here, the answer is obvious.
>
>
>
> I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the bazaar.
> Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from corporations,
> IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much later), but it looks
> like the vast majority of all of the development of these projects was done
> by developers working for IBM. I’m not sure that the projects ever had
> many significant contributions outside this effort from independent
> individual contributors for anything more substantial than small fixes.
> Individual volunteers generally want to work on interesting and fun stuff.
> Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C has been little more than hour after hour
> of boring maintenance work. Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going,
> testing the build system on multiple platforms, debugging and testing,
> reviewing, testing and applying patches applied to the various Linux and
> other distributions, plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun
> or rewarding, and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone
> to be doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to
> test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic
> infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a
> viable ongoing concern.
>
>
>
> There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a full-time
> job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free software and
> being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten obligations to satisfy.
> That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up with crippling RSI and
> massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my day job and tinker with
> some free software stuff on the side. Making a commitment to work on a
> project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with it ongoing obligations to do a
> lot of work on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner. I can’t continue
> to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C today has benefitted from the work I’ve
> done, without needing to contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C
> want the project to continue, then they will need to step up to do all this
> stuff themselves.
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 19 October 2022 08:13
> *To:* c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement
> seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online
> to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased
> with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
> licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
> Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of
> various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache
> Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE
> still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2
> plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I
> have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
> maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
> ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion
> of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity
> is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (
> https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
> compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the
> future.
>
>
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
The IBM team certainly hoped that we'd see more community involvement. But most folks seemed content to piggyback on IBM's contributions. (And Sun's; at least part of the compiler was adapted from their contribution though I don't remember them staying involved after that code dump.)
If you aren't willing to give back to free software, you probably shouldn't be betting your business on it. Free as free exchange is not free as in free beer.
--
/_ Joe Kesselman (he/him/his)
-/ _) My Alexa skill for New Music/New Sounds fans:
/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WJ3H657/
() Plaintext Ribbon Campaign
/\ Stamp out HTML mail!
________________________________
From: Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 5:03:27 PM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Hi Scott,
We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to commit to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time donated or money to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job I maintained an application which was critically dependent upon Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when we found deficiencies and faults in it, in particular portability defects, my employer graciously permitted me to work on both codebases and provide the necessary fixes, including signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost for me to contribute to these projects was ultimately paid for by my employer, because it benefitted them to have supported libraries that worked on all of the platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus any needed security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer actively involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or Xalan-C, and in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other libraries by one of my end users (which is reflective of people’s concern over the risk of using abandoned and unsupported libraries). So while altruism can go some way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I work on other projects from which I derive more benefit. I’m afraid to say that continuing to work on both projects costs me a great deal of time, for which I derive zero personal benefit, which is why it is time for me to cease participating in these projects and to work on others.
None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau during which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are wound down. Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using it and distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this one—it’s important that everyone understands the consequences of the change in status (even if that status is what was effectively the status quo for the best part of a decade). If the result of the discussion is that we end up with some new maintainers who make a genuine commitment to carrying the project forward, then I would be more than happy. If there are businesses or individuals who are dependent upon it for the continuation of their products and business continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt some consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to keep the project going.
However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid as I said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest in XML and XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries and tools for performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in Xalan is not unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies to QtXmlPatterns. Look at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the CI and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s no actual development going on there either. Basically what I was doing with Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been dropped entirely. To be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT, then paying for Saxon is probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for having a library which is actually maintained and which also has the best XSLT support of all of the XSLT libraries available. If you are basing your business on this, then there isn’t really much of a choice to make here, the answer is obvious.
I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the bazaar. Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from corporations, IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much later), but it looks like the vast majority of all of the development of these projects was done by developers working for IBM. I’m not sure that the projects ever had many significant contributions outside this effort from independent individual contributors for anything more substantial than small fixes. Individual volunteers generally want to work on interesting and fun stuff. Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C has been little more than hour after hour of boring maintenance work. Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going, testing the build system on multiple platforms, debugging and testing, reviewing, testing and applying patches applied to the various Linux and other distributions, plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun or rewarding, and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone to be doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a viable ongoing concern.
There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a full-time job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free software and being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten obligations to satisfy. That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up with crippling RSI and massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my day job and tinker with some free software stuff on the side. Making a commitment to work on a project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with it ongoing obligations to do a lot of work on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner. I can’t continue to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C today has benefitted from the work I’ve done, without needing to contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C want the project to continue, then they will need to step up to do all this stuff themselves.
Regards,
Roger
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 October 2022 08:13
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>.
Roger,
My rant about the declining state of the FOSS ecosystem and Apache
projects may have been better directed at Apache itself. I've seen a few
projects get shuffled over to Apache as if they were meant to die. It
would be ideal if Apache, besides a hosting space, also provided some
other kind of support to people who maintain their projects. Depending
on the generosity of companies where situations align with business
goals becomes analogous to winning on a scratch off lottery ticket.
Yeah, five bucks...
FWIW, "The Cathedral and The
Bazaar"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar) is a
reference to a book written by an early supporter of FOSS. Not to gate
keep, but grey hairs may be involved to know that reference. To see the
FOSS ecosystem reduced to "who will pay for supporting it" is disappointing.
But these are all big-picture problems.
Yup, XML and transformations isn't "sexy". It doesn't get media buzz. It
quietly does its job in the background and we all move along none the wiser.
If it seemed that my rant was personal, please know that it isn't.
You've been toiling away getting things done probably without praise or
other accolades. I appreciate your efforts.
Regards,
Scott
On 2022-10-19 15:03, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Scott,
>
> We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to
> commit to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time
> donated or money to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job
> I maintained an application which was critically dependent upon
> Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when we found deficiencies and faults in it, in
> particular portability defects, my employer graciously permitted me to
> work on both codebases and provide the necessary fixes, including
> signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost for me to contribute to
> these projects was ultimately paid for by my employer, because it
> benefitted them to have supported libraries that worked on all of the
> platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus any needed
> security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I
> continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer
> actively involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or
> Xalan-C, and in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other
> libraries by one of my end users (which is reflective of people’s
> concern over the risk of using abandoned and unsupported libraries).
> So while altruism can go some way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I
> work on other projects from which I derive more benefit. I’m afraid
> to say that continuing to work on both projects costs me a great deal
> of time, for which I derive zero personal benefit, which is why it is
> time for me to cease participating in these projects and to work on
> others.
>
> None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the
> project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a
> lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau
> during which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are
> wound down. Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
>
> One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true
> maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using
> it and distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this
> one—it’s important that everyone understands the consequences of the
> change in status (even if that status is what was effectively the
> status quo for the best part of a decade). If the result of the
> discussion is that we end up with some new maintainers who make a
> genuine commitment to carrying the project forward, then I would be
> more than happy. If there are businesses or individuals who are
> dependent upon it for the continuation of their products and business
> continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt some
> consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to
> keep the project going.
>
> However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid
> as I said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest
> in XML and XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries
> and tools for performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in
> Xalan is not unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies
> to QtXmlPatterns. Look at
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged
> <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged>
> to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the
> CI and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s
> no actual development going on there either. Basically what I was
> doing with Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been
> dropped entirely. To be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT,
> then paying for Saxon is probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for
> having a library which is actually maintained and which also has the
> best XSLT support of all of the XSLT libraries available. If you are
> basing your business on this, then there isn’t really much of a choice
> to make here, the answer is obvious.
>
> I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the
> bazaar. Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from
> corporations, IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much
> later), but it looks like the vast majority of all of the development
> of these projects was done by developers working for IBM. I’m not
> sure that the projects ever had many significant contributions outside
> this effort from independent individual contributors for anything more
> substantial than small fixes. Individual volunteers generally want to
> work on interesting and fun stuff. Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C
> has been little more than hour after hour of boring maintenance work.
> Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going, testing the build system
> on multiple platforms, debugging and testing, reviewing, testing and
> applying patches applied to the various Linux and other distributions,
> plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun or rewarding,
> and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone to be
> doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to
> test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic
> infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a
> viable ongoing concern.
>
> There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a
> full-time job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free
> software and being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten
> obligations to satisfy. That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up
> with crippling RSI and massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my
> day job and tinker with some free software stuff on the side. Making
> a commitment to work on a project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with
> it ongoing obligations to do a lot of work on an ongoing basis and in
> a timely manner. I can’t continue to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C
> today has benefitted from the work I’ve done, without needing to
> contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C want the project to
> continue, then they will need to step up to do all this stuff themselves.
>
> Regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:* Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 19 October 2022 08:13
> *To:* c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but
> retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove
> online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was
> not pleased with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
> licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
> Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers
> of various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the
> Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release
> iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable
> to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project
> seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache
> projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
> maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
> ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The
> notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work
> in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the
> 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
> compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in
> the future.
>
>
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Scott,
We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to commit to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time donated or money to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job I maintained an application which was critically dependent upon Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when we found deficiencies and faults in it, in particular portability defects, my employer graciously permitted me to work on both codebases and provide the necessary fixes, including signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost for me to contribute to these projects was ultimately paid for by my employer, because it benefitted them to have supported libraries that worked on all of the platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus any needed security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer actively involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or Xalan-C, and in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other libraries by one of my end users (which is reflective of people’s concern over the risk of using abandoned and unsupported libraries). So while altruism can go some way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I work on other projects from which I derive more benefit. I’m afraid to say that continuing to work on both projects costs me a great deal of time, for which I derive zero personal benefit, which is why it is time for me to cease participating in these projects and to work on others.
None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau during which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are wound down. Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using it and distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this one—it’s important that everyone understands the consequences of the change in status (even if that status is what was effectively the status quo for the best part of a decade). If the result of the discussion is that we end up with some new maintainers who make a genuine commitment to carrying the project forward, then I would be more than happy. If there are businesses or individuals who are dependent upon it for the continuation of their products and business continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt some consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to keep the project going.
However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid as I said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest in XML and XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries and tools for performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in Xalan is not unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies to QtXmlPatterns. Look at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the CI and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s no actual development going on there either. Basically what I was doing with Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been dropped entirely. To be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT, then paying for Saxon is probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for having a library which is actually maintained and which also has the best XSLT support of all of the XSLT libraries available. If you are basing your business on this, then there isn’t really much of a choice to make here, the answer is obvious.
I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the bazaar. Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from corporations, IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much later), but it looks like the vast majority of all of the development of these projects was done by developers working for IBM. I’m not sure that the projects ever had many significant contributions outside this effort from independent individual contributors for anything more substantial than small fixes. Individual volunteers generally want to work on interesting and fun stuff. Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C has been little more than hour after hour of boring maintenance work. Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going, testing the build system on multiple platforms, debugging and testing, reviewing, testing and applying patches applied to the various Linux and other distributions, plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun or rewarding, and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone to be doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a viable ongoing concern.
There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a full-time job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free software and being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten obligations to satisfy. That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up with crippling RSI and massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my day job and tinker with some free software stuff on the side. Making a commitment to work on a project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with it ongoing obligations to do a lot of work on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner. I can’t continue to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C today has benefitted from the work I’ve done, without needing to contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C want the project to continue, then they will need to step up to do all this stuff themselves.
Regards,
Roger
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 October 2022 08:13
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Scott,
We can all “hope” for maintenance but ultimately someone needs to commit to doing the work. That needs paying for, be it in time donated or money to pay for someone else to do it. In my previous job I maintained an application which was critically dependent upon Xerces-C/Xalan-C, and when we found deficiencies and faults in it, in particular portability defects, my employer graciously permitted me to work on both codebases and provide the necessary fixes, including signing off the Corporate CLA. So the cost for me to contribute to these projects was ultimately paid for by my employer, because it benefitted them to have supported libraries that worked on all of the platforms and compiler versions we cared about, plus any needed security fixes being applied. After leaving that position, I continued to contribute, but at this point in time I’m no longer actively involved in working on codebases which use either Xerces-C or Xalan-C, and in fact I was contracted to replace their use with other libraries by one of my end users (which is reflective of people’s concern over the risk of using abandoned and unsupported libraries). So while altruism can go some way, I’m afraid my time is limited and I work on other projects from which I derive more benefit. I’m afraid to say that continuing to work on both projects costs me a great deal of time, for which I derive zero personal benefit, which is why it is time for me to cease participating in these projects and to work on others.
None of this is “right” or “wrong”, it’s just the reality of where the project is at this point in its life. All software projects have a lifecycle, a beginning when they are actively developed, a plateau during which they are maintained and stable and an end when they are wound down. Xalan-C is at the end. Xerces-C isn’t far behind.
One of the reasons for moving Xalan-C to the Attic is to make the true maintenance status of the project abundantly clear to everyone using it and distributing it. Including provoking discussions such as this one—it’s important that everyone understands the consequences of the change in status (even if that status is what was effectively the status quo for the best part of a decade). If the result of the discussion is that we end up with some new maintainers who make a genuine commitment to carrying the project forward, then I would be more than happy. If there are businesses or individuals who are dependent upon it for the continuation of their products and business continuity, then perhaps this discussion will prompt some consideration of whether or not they need to contribute actively to keep the project going.
However, while it would be nice to hope for such actions, I’m afraid as I said in my original email on the subject, that overall interest in XML and XSLT is waning, and there is much less demand for libraries and tools for performing XSLT transforms. So the lack of interest in Xalan is not unique. It also applies to libxslt, and it also applies to QtXmlPatterns. Look at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged to see how active libxslt is—it’s primarily sporadic churn to fix the CI and some minor portability issues and one or two bugfixes; there’s no actual development going on there either. Basically what I was doing with Xalan-C for the 1.12 release. QtXmlPatterns has been dropped entirely. To be frank, if a company really needs to use XSLT, then paying for Saxon is probably the best choice—you’ll be paying for having a library which is actually maintained and which also has the best XSLT support of all of the XSLT libraries available. If you are basing your business on this, then there isn’t really much of a choice to make here, the answer is obvious.
I’m not sure I really buy the point about the cathedral and the bazaar. Xerces-C and Xalan-C benefitted from huge contributions from corporations, IBM in particular. I could be wrong (I came in much later), but it looks like the vast majority of all of the development of these projects was done by developers working for IBM. I’m not sure that the projects ever had many significant contributions outside this effort from independent individual contributors for anything more substantial than small fixes. Individual volunteers generally want to work on interesting and fun stuff. Working on Xerces-C and Xalan-C has been little more than hour after hour of boring maintenance work. Hundreds of man-hours keeping the CI going, testing the build system on multiple platforms, debugging and testing, reviewing, testing and applying patches applied to the various Linux and other distributions, plus GitHub PRs. Necessary, but not particularly fun or rewarding, and extremely time consuming. But the project needs someone to be doing this on an ongoing basis as a basic prerequisite to be able to test changes and make releases, and generally provide the basic infrastructure one would expect from a healthy and active project as a viable ongoing concern.
There’s a limit to what an individual can do. I used to work a full-time job and then spend another 6-8 hours every day writing free software and being a Debian developer, with a lot of unwritten obligations to satisfy. That worked until I hit my 30s and I ended up with crippling RSI and massively burnt out. Today in my 40s I work my day job and tinker with some free software stuff on the side. Making a commitment to work on a project like Xalan-C or Xerces-C brings with it ongoing obligations to do a lot of work on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner. I can’t continue to do that. Everyone using Xalan-C today has benefitted from the work I’ve done, without needing to contribute anything back. If users of Xalan-C want the project to continue, then they will need to step up to do all this stuff themselves.
Regards,
Roger
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 October 2022 08:13
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org; dev@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
Things can be pulled back out if the attic if someone wants to resume servicing them.
Attic doesn't mean you need to stop using it. It means you need to accept that unless someone actually starts writing and sharing fixes again, you are explicitly on your own.
Or someone could be really brave and tackle a fresh port of the Java code, giving us Xalan-C 2.0.
If I was going to put in that much effort, though, I'd actually be tempted to port to Rust.
--
/_ Joe Kesselman (he/him/his)
-/ _) My Alexa skill for New Music/New Sounds fans:
/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WJ3H657/
() Plaintext Ribbon Campaign
/\ Stamp out HTML mail!
________________________________
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13:24 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Carlos A <ca...@gmail.com>.
> You should: Answer users' questions that are obvious to you. Scan Jira and GitHub to see if you can fix issues BUT... The level of activity on the mailing list, JIRA, and GitHub should be an obvious indication of the health of the project, which has been low for a long time.
Yes many people are selfish about open source and do not understand
how it works, you have a point here, but the low activity of many ASF
projects is more an indication of a failure in the ASF project
management, with the concept of the PMC showing its flaws.
For example, the Xalan-Java project has two pull requests here:
https://github.com/apache/xalan-java/pulls
The first one (that I posted) was just ignored and the other one
wasn't merged in the end. Someone asked on JIRA (XALANJ-2633) which
Github repo is appropriate to send PRs, zero responses.
So you can tell people that they should get involved, but if they did
they would most likely be ignored.
Carlos Amengual
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by "Gary D. Gregory" <gg...@apache.org>.
Hi All,
It feels to me like your expectations are unrealistic, or perhaps you don't know enough about using open-source software. The responsibility is yours to get involved to make sure any project stays alive. This examplifies the opposite of engagement:
"On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per see."
This is just selfish from my FOSS POV. There might not be anything to ask, but there could be things to SAY.
You should: Answer users' questions that are obvious to you. Scan Jira and GitHub to see if you can fix issues BUT... The level of activity on the mailing list, JIRA, and GitHub should be an obvious indication of the health of the project, which has been low for a long time. If you don't see new users asking noob questions, that just means the project is aging out. Which is where we've arrived sadly.
One scenario for you is to fork the project on GitHub and start a new community. Or not. Up to you.
Gary
On 2022/10/19 13:55:02 Rob Conde wrote:
> I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
>
> My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
>
> I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
>
> Rob Conde
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
> To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
>
> /rant
> Scott
>
>
> On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
>
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
>
>
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
>
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
> Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
> [cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by wwp <su...@free.fr>.
Hello,
On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:55:02 +0000 Rob Conde <ro...@ai-solutions.com> wrote:
> I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
>
> My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
>
> I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
+1 with all 3 paragraphs.
Regards,
> ________________________________
> From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
> To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
>
> /rant
> Scott
>
>
> On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
>
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
>
>
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
>
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
> Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
> [cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
--
wwp
https://useplaintext.email/
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by wwp <su...@free.fr>.
Hello,
On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:55:02 +0000 Rob Conde <ro...@ai-solutions.com> wrote:
> I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
>
> My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
>
> I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
+1 with all 3 paragraphs.
Regards,
> ________________________________
> From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
> To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
>
> Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
> - Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
> - Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
>
> The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
>
> I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
>
> Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
>
> /rant
> Scott
>
>
> On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
>
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
>
>
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
>
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
> Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
> Subject: Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
> [cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
--
wwp
https://useplaintext.email/
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Joseph Kessselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
(Just noticed I should probably have copied my brief rant to c-users@.
Sigh. Sorry.)
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Joseph Kesselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
The apache attic is a pretty well defined concept, I think: it means a project that has nobody committed to actively supporting it, running periodic builds and tests against it's dependencies at least and preferably actively maintaining it. Same status as an orphan project on GitHub or other open-source platforms if their developer community fades away.
Which does seem to be where Xalan-C now stands, unless someone is willing to step forward.
If you aren't contributing to that effort, you're letting it go to attic status. If you can't afford to make that investment, that's an indication of the real value you put on the project, or lack thereof.
If anything, we should be applauding the noble few who _have_ kept it alive this long!
--
/_ Joe Kesselman (he/him/his)
-/ _) My Alexa skill for New Music/New Sounds fans:
/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WJ3H657/
() Plaintext Ribbon Campaign
/\ Stamp out HTML mail!
________________________________
From: Rob Conde <ro...@ai-solutions.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 9:55:02 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
Rob Conde
________________________________
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Rob Conde <ro...@ai-solutions.com>.
I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
Rob Conde
________________________________
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Rob Conde <ro...@ai-solutions.com>.
I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers - I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that really means.
Rob Conde
________________________________
From: Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-...@xalan.apache.org>; dev@xalan.apache.org <de...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>.
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement
seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove
online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was
not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of
various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the
Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release
iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to
the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems
focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache
projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The
notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in
obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the
'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in
the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the
> final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the
> PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the
> Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does
> the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various
> distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just
> notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own
> judgement on the risks?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:* Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 15 October 2022 12:42
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Cc:* c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of
> involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that
> would be (a) for me.
>
> Gary
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this
> subject. There is a related discussion about this on the
> Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach
> a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which
> can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the
> source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the
> maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are
> no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any
> maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still
> present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect
> of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be
> leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of
> the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to
> it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken
> impression that this is a project which is active and well
> supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library
> which new projects should be considering to use.
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but
> realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the
> project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote
> for (a).
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is,
> where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does
> not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it
> to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the
> project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released
> Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in
> October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had
> been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream
> distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows
> the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this
> release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the
> /sole/ committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J.
> Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng,
> Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal
> contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt,
> David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the
> /1.10/ release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then
> has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability
> work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different
> toolchains on different platforms and some documentation
> work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and
> nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different
> platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build
> on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to
> Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements
> outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other
> than myself
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed).
> One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr).
> This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of
> unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on
> a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I
> wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12
> release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying
> codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
> bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to
> do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using
> Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work
> and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation
> of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
> happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven
> J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement
> or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an
> active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And
> while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active
> engagement of users as a community.
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all
> contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made
> it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java
> libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
> critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the
> foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless
> there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C
> doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the
> current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we
> take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I
> think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end
> the project gracefully.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Scott Furry <sc...@gmail.com>.
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement
seems wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove
online to plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was
not pleased with what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling
licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that
Gnome is not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of
various type and quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the
Apache Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release
iterations the IDE still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to
the Netbeans 8.2 plugin. Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems
focused on Java. I have an overall negative impression of Apache
projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to
maintain code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos
("Big Box Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The
notion of the dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in
obscurity is becoming quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the
'Dependency' comic (https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in
the future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the
> final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the
> PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the
> Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does
> the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various
> distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just
> notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own
> judgement on the risks?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:* Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 15 October 2022 12:42
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Cc:* c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of
> involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that
> would be (a) for me.
>
> Gary
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this
> subject. There is a related discussion about this on the
> Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach
> a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which
> can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the
> source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the
> maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are
> no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any
> maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still
> present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect
> of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be
> leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of
> the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to
> it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken
> impression that this is a project which is active and well
> supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library
> which new projects should be considering to use.
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but
> realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the
> project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote
> for (a).
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is,
> where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does
> not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it
> to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the
> project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released
> Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in
> October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had
> been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream
> distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows
> the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this
> release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the
> /sole/ committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J.
> Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng,
> Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal
> contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt,
> David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the
> /1.10/ release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then
> has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability
> work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different
> toolchains on different platforms and some documentation
> work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and
> nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different
> platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build
> on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to
> Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements
> outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other
> than myself
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed).
> One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr).
> This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of
> unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on
> a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I
> wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12
> release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying
> codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
> bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to
> do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using
> Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work
> and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation
> of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
> happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven
> J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement
> or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an
> active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And
> while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active
> engagement of users as a community.
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all
> contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made
> it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java
> libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
> critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the
> foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless
> there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C
> doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the
> current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we
> take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I
> think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end
> the project gracefully.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
I'll put it on the to do list. The PMC will NOT be dissolved because we are
still dealing with Xalan-J.
Gaty
On Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 13:43 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final
> tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
>
>
>
> So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC
> chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would
> it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get
> dissolved entirely)?
>
>
>
> Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various
> distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify
> them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on
> the risks?
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 15 October 2022 12:42
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org
> *Cc:* c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
>
>
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement
> with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for
> me.
>
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: dev@xalan.apache.org
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rleigh@codelibre.net<ma...@codelibre.net> <rl...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: dev@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>; c-users@xalan.apache.org<ma...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Steven Hathaway <sh...@e-z.net>.
Retirement of Xalan-C
a. Retire the project to the Attic (My Vote)
b. Keep the project going
I appreciate the work of Roger Leigh, William Blugh, and Gary Gregory on
Xalan-C as a project with little usage. My major work with xalan-c was
the release of 1.11. I don't have the time to mentor and implement
features such as:
* Caching standard documents instead of requiring internet access to
W3 repositories to support validation in absence of W3 internet access.
* Implementing additional date-time extensions based on a time
continuum number and adding a robust namespace plugin capability.
* Ensuring that the code base supports STL deprecation of features in
new C++ language implementations. This requires implementing new
templates in the low-level code base.
* The project relies on Xerces-C for the XML readers.
We don't have the contributors and committers for these issues. The
health of the related xerces-c project is also an issue.
The various commercial projects I helped maintain have discontinued
using xalan-c in their design and maintenance. I don't know of other
projects that incorporate xalan-c as a requirement.
Linux Distributions
* Fedora (epel) continues to have xalan-c 1.12.0 for Centos-8-Stream
and RHEL-8.
* Debian-10 distributes the old xalan-c 1.11
The mail lists have seen virtually no traffic regarding the use and
issues of Xalan-C.
As for going forward, my vote is for (a).
a. Retire the project to the Attic
b. Keep the project going
Sincerely,
Steven J. Hathaway
On 10/15/2022 4:42 AM, Gary Gregory wrote:
> Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of
> involvement with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that
> would be (a) for me.
>
> Gary
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this
> subject. There is a related discussion about this on the
> Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach
> a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which
> can be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the
> source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to
> the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there
> are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing
> any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are
> still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little
> prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself
> will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no
> time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to
> see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the
> mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and
> well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a
> library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but
> realistically I’m the only one who has done any work on the
> project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote
> for (a).
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:*rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is,
> where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does
> not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it
> to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the
> project’s commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released
> Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in
> October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had
> been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream
> distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows
> the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this
> release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the
> /sole/ committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J.
> Hathaway being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng,
> Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal
> contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt,
> David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the
> /1.10/ release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then
> has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability
> work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different
> toolchains on different platforms and some documentation
> work. There was one code improvement of note: “Add number and
> nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of
> essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different
> platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build
> on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to
> Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside
> essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other
> than myself
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed).
> One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR
> (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr).
> This looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of
> unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on
> a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I
> wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12
> release for that reason. But I don’t know the underlying
> codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
> bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to
> do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using
> Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work
> and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation
> of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
> happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven
> J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement
> or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an
> active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And
> while I’m sure there are some users, there’s next to no active
> engagement of users as a community.
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all
> contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made
> it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java
> libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
> critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the
> foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless
> there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C
> doesn’t support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the
> current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we
> take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I
> think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end
> the project gracefully.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement
with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for
me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Roger,
PMC members and committers are listed on
https://projects.apache.org/committee.html?xalan
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement
with it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for
me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Joseph Kessselman <ke...@alum.mit.edu>.
Not that I have a vote, but I have to agree with retiring it.
Xalan-C was a port of the original Xalan-J. (Well, of the original
LotusXSL, actually.) We did a *lot* of redesign of Xalan-J over the
years, to the point where I had trouble remembering enough of the
original design to patch Xalan-C without reverse-engineering my way back
into it. (Admittely I'm not really a C++ coder; I've just seen enough
languages and libraries to let me fake it.)
Xalan-C isn't just a port of the current Java code; keeping it going
would mean continuing to support two significantly different designs.
Open source lives or dies on involvement from folks who don't just
consume the code but are willing to help maintain it. At this point
Xalan-C doesn't seem to have the core community needed to remain viable.
Retiring doesn't mean folks can't use it; it just means they have to
understand that they have to organize their own support until and unless
people step forward and say they want to get involved in supporting it
for everyone. We can always bring it back from retirement if and when
that happens; meanwhile it's time to set the expectations properly and
put it on pause.
We retired Xalan-J 1.0 when we introduced 2.0. Time to retire its C++
brother.
On 10/14/2022 4:35 PM, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Summary of votes so far:
>
> 1 for retiring
>
> 1 for keeping the project going
>
> This wasn’t strictly following the Apache voting guidelines, having a
> read of them. However, unless anyone else would like to add to the
> discussion or cast their vote (I’ll check back on Sunday), we
> currently have a tie here.
>
> With regard to keeping the project going, I would like to have a bit
> more discussion about that. What does the “status quo” keep things as
> they are option actually mean, in the absence of any active
> maintenance? I’m not very happy with that situation because of how
> misleading this is to end users. The primary reason of suggesting the
> move to the Attic is to clearly indicate that the project is
> unmaintained. It can always be resurrected in the future if there is
> a demand for it. But after the “reboot” of the PMC, how much work has
> concretely been done by anyone except for myself? If you look at the
> codebase, the answer is nothing at all. Nothing has been contributed
> at all. The project is dead. When I leave it will live on as a
> zombie, but will be in practice completely unmaintained. I would very
> much like for us to be able to come to a definitive consensus here
> which is realistic about the prospects for this project, but that will
> require some active participation from the current PMC and any other
> participants for it to be possible.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
> *From:*Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 07 October 2022 13:19
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
>
> Dear all,
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing
> list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this
> for Xalan-C as well.
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can
> be viewed or downloaded here: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> icon xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the
> maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no
> active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any
> maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still
> present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is little prospect of
> previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the
> project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome—I
> no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work
> and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we
> don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project
> which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not.
> This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically
> I’m the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8
> years. So if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Summary of votes so far:
1 for retiring
1 for keeping the project going
This wasn't strictly following the Apache voting guidelines, having a read of them. However, unless anyone else would like to add to the discussion or cast their vote (I'll check back on Sunday), we currently have a tie here.
With regard to keeping the project going, I would like to have a bit more discussion about that. What does the "status quo" keep things as they are option actually mean, in the absence of any active maintenance? I'm not very happy with that situation because of how misleading this is to end users. The primary reason of suggesting the move to the Attic is to clearly indicate that the project is unmaintained. It can always be resurrected in the future if there is a demand for it. But after the "reboot" of the PMC, how much work has concretely been done by anyone except for myself? If you look at the codebase, the answer is nothing at all. Nothing has been contributed at all. The project is dead. When I leave it will live on as a zombie, but will be in practice completely unmaintained. I would very much like for us to be able to come to a definitive consensus here which is realistic about the prospects for this project, but that will require some active participation from the current PMC and any other participants for it to be possible.
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: 07 October 2022 13:19
To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Dear all,
It's been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [?xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes-there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer-so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome-I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don't leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I'm not sure if I'm formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I'm the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I'll vote for (a).
RE: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>.
Summary of votes so far:
1 for retiring
1 for keeping the project going
This wasn't strictly following the Apache voting guidelines, having a read of them. However, unless anyone else would like to add to the discussion or cast their vote (I'll check back on Sunday), we currently have a tie here.
With regard to keeping the project going, I would like to have a bit more discussion about that. What does the "status quo" keep things as they are option actually mean, in the absence of any active maintenance? I'm not very happy with that situation because of how misleading this is to end users. The primary reason of suggesting the move to the Attic is to clearly indicate that the project is unmaintained. It can always be resurrected in the future if there is a demand for it. But after the "reboot" of the PMC, how much work has concretely been done by anyone except for myself? If you look at the codebase, the answer is nothing at all. Nothing has been contributed at all. The project is dead. When I leave it will live on as a zombie, but will be in practice completely unmaintained. I would very much like for us to be able to come to a definitive consensus here which is realistic about the prospects for this project, but that will require some active participation from the current PMC and any other participants for it to be possible.
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net>
Sent: 07 October 2022 13:19
To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
Subject: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Dear all,
It's been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [?xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes-there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer-so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome-I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don't leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I'm not sure if I'm formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I'm the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I'll vote for (a).
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
Roger,
PMC members and committers are listed on
https://projects.apache.org/committee.html?xalan
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh <rl...@codelibre.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject.
> There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list
> just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C
> as well.
>
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be
> viewed or downloaded here: [image: xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
> xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx
> <https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
> There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
> repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance
> status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers,
> no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the
> previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so
> there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I
> myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered
> irrespective of the outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to
> commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired
> gracefully so that we don’t leave anyone with the mistaken impression that
> this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most
> certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be
> considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
>
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
>
> 1 Bill Blough
>
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
>
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
>
> 182 Roger Leigh
>
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
>
>
> I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m
> the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So
> if I can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> *From:* rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> *Sent:* 22 June 2022 23:21
> *To:* dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> *Subject:* Future of xalan-c
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it
> is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a
> future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
>
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s
> commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
>
>
>
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C
> 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and
> it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the
> course of years by several downstream distributors.
>
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the
> major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is
> comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the *sole* committer
> for this release.
>
>
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
> being the principal contributor.
>
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
> Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew
> Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
> Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
>
>
> The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
>
>
>
> - Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the *1.10*
> release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more
> than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
> toolchains.
> - 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
> platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of
> note: “Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
> - 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
> bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake
> support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the
> documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or
> improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> - There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> - There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> - Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and
> sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One
> was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering
> platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (
> https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This
> looks simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected
> subtleties.
>
>
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a
> project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and
> contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that
> reason. But I don’t know the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real
> feature development or deep bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with
> XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects
> using Xalan-C, I’m no longer realistically able to do any further
> maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done the most recent work and made
> the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the incorporation of community
> patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside
> from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s last work in 2012.
>
>
>
> I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or
> developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project
> in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are
> some users, there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
>
>
> I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to
> medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary
> platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build
> without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included
> in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a
> usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further
> development.
>
>
>
> However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
> dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT
> 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on
> indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if
> there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line
> at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roger
>
Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough <de...@blough.us.INVALID>.
I vote #2.
On Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 12:19:10PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> It's been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [?xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes-there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer-so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome-I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don't leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
> 1 Bill Blough
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
> 182 Roger Leigh
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I'm not sure if I'm formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I'm the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I'll vote for (a).
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Roger
>
> From: rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> Subject: Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project's commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> [cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I'd like to make here are the following:
>
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: "Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters"
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I'm not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons-I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don't know the underlying codebase, and I can't do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don't have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I'm no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn't done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it's most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway's last work in 2012.
>
> I don't personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I'm sure there are some users, there's next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
> I've made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don't see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn't support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Roger
--
GPG: 5CDD 0C9C F446 BC1B 2509 8791 1762 E022 7034 CF84
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Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Posted by Bill Blough via c-users <c-...@xalan.apache.org>.
I vote #2.
On Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 12:19:10PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> It's been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
>
>
> I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed or downloaded here: [?xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon] xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>. There are no changes-there has not been a single commit to the source repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer-so there is little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the outcome-I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don't leave anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new projects should be considering to use.
>
>
>
> This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
>
>
> $ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
> 1 Benjamin Beasley
> 1 Bill Blough
> 1 Biswapriyo Nath
> 1 Kvarec Lezki
> 182 Roger Leigh
> 29 Steven J. Hathaway
>
>
>
> I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
>
>
>
> 1. Retire the project to the Attic
> 2. Keep the project going
>
> I'm not sure if I'm formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I'm the only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I can vote on this I'll vote for (a).
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Roger
>
> From: rleigh@codelibre.net <rl...@codelibre.net>
> Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
> To: dev@xalan.apache.org; c-users@xalan.apache.org
> Subject: Future of xalan-c
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
>
> To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project's commit activity over the previous 22 years:
>
> [cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
>
> Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12. This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of years by several downstream distributors.
> https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
>
> The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway being the principal contributor.
> The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
> The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
>
> The main points I'd like to make here are the following:
>
>
> * Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and toolchains.
> * 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note: "Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters"
> * 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential bugfixing.
> * There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
> * There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
> * Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs. There is one open PR (https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks simple but I'm not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
>
> I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons-I worked on a project using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don't know the underlying codebase, and I can't do any real feature development or deep bugfixing. I don't have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I'm no longer realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn't done the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it's most likely that the incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway's last work in 2012.
>
> I don't personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense. There is no one working on it. And while I'm sure there are some users, there's next to no active engagement of users as a community.
>
> I've made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term. The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable future even in the absence of further development.
>
> However, I don't see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn't support XSLT 2.0 and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely, I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the project gracefully.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Roger
--
GPG: 5CDD 0C9C F446 BC1B 2509 8791 1762 E022 7034 CF84