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Posted to dev@flex.apache.org by Rafael Santos <rs...@spectacompany.com.br> on 2012/06/05 02:35:35 UTC

Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Hey everyone,

Sorry for not being around and helping more the community in the last few
months.

My company (Specta) is still 100% engaged to Apache Flex and its community,
although we are still behind on latest Flex version on most of our Apps.

I would like to provoke a discussion that I know that might make some of
you angry.... "Will we be able to keep Flex alive from its migration period
from Adobe to Apache?"

I see that the community has been having some difficulties regarding:

   - getting sources from Adobe
      - some libraries that have not been committed yet
      - the new compiler that we could be helping
      - getting Adobe folks engaged enough to make this migration happen
   - getting a life and identity of our own
   - getting it all to work and get independent from Adobe (I see that the
      first builds are being generated)
   - future support from Adobe with Flash Player on other platforms
      - I went to a Firefox workshop this weekend and Firefox
      representatives told me that Adobe has abandoned Firefox for quite some
      time and they have been focusing only on Chrome (cause Google is
paying for
      it)
      - We are attached to an application that could die at anytime as have
      already happened Flash Catalyst, Flash Player Debugger for Linux and
      others. As we know Adobe has a serious lack of communication.


I am also worried about:

   - there is a really fast movement from people that loved Flex to
   technologies such as javascript + html5 + css3, including some core people
   from Apache Flex.
   - some flex projects are becoming ghosts (no commits for quite some time)
   - blogs about flex are dying or moving to other technologies


I would like to hear from the core team and everyone on the community... I
want know what are you thinking and hear some suggestions on how we can
make this happen and how to address this issues... how can we show everyone
that we are still alive and that it is worth working with Flex. I have some
ideas of my own but I would like to start the debate without compromising
the answers.

Just to finish.... I have nothing against Adobe, actually I used to love
everything about Adobe, but they have been making some very bad
decisions.... Maybe good for them but definitely not for some of us....

Regards,
Rafael Santos

RE: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by "Guthmann, Scott" <sg...@on3solutions.com>.

> "Will we be able to keep Flex alive from its migration period from Adobe to Apache?"
Rafael: I moderate the Apache Flex Developers linked in group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Apache-Flex-Developers-4296888/about
Your question is better posted at this alternate location as the participants on this [high-volume flex-dev@incubator.apache.org] list are all committed to doing what is needed to make Apache Flex successful. All the communications are ideally on this single subject. We have had some interesting and spirited debates about Apache Flex on this linkedin group & various evangelist level, architect level and other Flex developers have had a good time debating the options available to developers today.

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/12 7:59 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
>> Although the JIRA import problems need to be solved, I don't see what
>> prevents people from using the existing instance at
>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLEX to go forward without
>> having to wait for that....

>> I assume issues created there can be linked to existing issues in the
>> Adobe Flex JIRA if that's still up, and if that's not the case we can
>> fairly easily host a static copy of that somewhere so that people can
>> find the required information....

> What does it take to host a static copy, and, if we can have a standalone
> copy, why does it have to be static?  I know it is a trade-off, but having
> our own JIRA instance still seems to have more pro's than con's...

A static copy of the current Adobe JIRA can be hosted alongside
http://incubator.apache.org/flex/ with minimal work.

Hosting a dedicated JIRA instance for Flex can be done on a server or
virtual machine that ASF infra would provide, but the Flex PPMC then
has full responsibility for maintaining it. How's that going to work
medium to long term? Who's going to be on call for maintenance issues?

I hear there might be progress on INFRA-4380 after the recent JIRA
upgrades, but if that doesn't happen I'm far from convinced that a
dedicated instance is the right thing to do - a static copy of the
Adobe JIRA would be much easier to manage IMO, and would naturally
lead to forgetting about irrelevant/old issues which might actually
help.

-Bertrand

AW: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by "christofer.dutz@c-ware.de" <ch...@c-ware.de>.

Atlassian Offers Open Source Projects the Full set of their tools free of charge. Even the hosted "On Demand/Studio" Suite.

That's what we did with Flexmojos. What I find really nice about it, ist hat I don't have to keep the stuff updated, backed up, etc. 

Mabe this would be an option for Flex too?

Chris

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Alex Harui [mailto:aharui@adobe.com] 
Gesendet: Dienstag, 5. Juni 2012 18:54
An: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

On 6/5/12 7:59 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> Although the JIRA import problems need to be solved, I don't see what 
> prevents people from using the existing instance at 
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLEX to go forward without 
> having to wait for that.
Folks are welcome to file new bugs there, but I thought we agreed we didn't want duplicate issues to manage after the import happens.
> 
> I assume issues created there can be linked to existing issues in the 
> Adobe Flex JIRA if that's still up, and if that's not the case we can 
> fairly easily host a static copy of that somewhere so that people can 
> find the required information.
Adobe JIRA is still up, but I am hearing that it won't be up forever.

What does it take to host a static copy, and, if we can have a standalone copy, why does it have to be static?  I know it is a trade-off, but having our own JIRA instance still seems to have more pro's than con's.  The likelihood of transferring instances between Flex and other Apache projects seems minimal.

Maybe every large project going into the incubator should be required to contribute a server and disk space.  Then it would be our own fault if we run out of space doing CI builds, we can import SVN dumps whenever we want to, and we can have our own JIRA.

--
Alex Harui
Flex SDK Team
Adobe Systems, Inc.
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:27 AM, Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
> Bertrand wrote:
>
>> Without knowing the current list of issues in detail I tend to agree
>> with your view - hence my proposal to dump the current JIRA issues as
>> static html files served from an apache.org server....

> ...How easy would a static site if created be searchable?

It would be on the web so visible to search engines.

Next step would be to install a simple search engine on an Apache VM
maintained by the Flex project. Much less critical IMO that running a
Flex-specific JIRA instance, so much easier.

Note however that news in INFRA-4380 indicate that this import issue
might be fixed, PPMC can test the import now, let's wait for the
outcome of that.

-Bertrand

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.

Hi,

> Without knowing the current list of issues in detail I tend to agree
> with your view - hence my proposal to dump the current JIRA issues as
> static html files served from an apache.org server.
There is a large number of open issues and lot of issues that were closed and deferred which probably should be reopened. (IMO)

There'a a lot of valuable information on existing bugs (including fixes that haven't been implemented) so we do need it accessible somehow.

How easy would s static site if created be searchable?

Thanks,
Justin

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Rick Winscot <ri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...I have a solution for the Jira dump... forget it... move on... I can almost guarantee that more than 60% of
> it is out-dated, 20% is irrelevant, 10% is ancient history, 9.9% are actually Flash bugs, .01% is applicable
> to Apache Flex .... and it will take FOREVER to troll through all the mire to get to that .01%....

Without knowing the current list of issues in detail I tend to agree
with your view - hence my proposal to dump the current JIRA issues as
static html files served from an apache.org server.

I wouldn't be possible to make any changes to those "legacy" issues,
but each one would have its own permanent URL that can be referred
from http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLEX.

-Bertrand

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.

Hi,

We have a large dump of the issue in (XML format?) so probably no need for screen scraping. Hopefully the issue can be sorted in the near future and we don't have to resort to anything like that.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: Review after first months of Apache Flex, new guidelines and keeping Flex alive

Posted by David Francis Buhler <da...@gmail.com>.

Would it be possible to just screen-scrape the existing JIRA pages and add
them to a a SQL script or CSV for import into the Apache JIRA?

[0] http://scrapy.org/

David Buhler


On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Guthmann, Scott
<sg...@on3solutions.com>wrote:

> > I have a solution for the Jira dump... forget it... move on... I can
> almost guarantee that more than 60% of it is out-dated, 20% is irrelevant,
> 10% is ancient history, 9.9% are actually Flash bugs, .01% is applicable to
> Apache Flex .... and it will take FOREVER to
> > troll through all the mire to get to that .01%.
> > I have a solution for the build server... everyone drop everything
> you're doing, get a Mac Mini, throw it in a colo, and concentrate on
> building the SDK just like Adobe did it. Getting the first release out the
> door is of paramount importance... once we get
> > to that point - we have 'forever' to renovate.
> > Rick Winscot
> Rick - I bet that you are correct. I do not think the problem is that the
> community will have difficulty finding bugs and adding them to the bugbase
> even if it is duplicate work. I think the promise of getting a parity
> release out sooner outweighs the hassle of duplicating work already done.
> Wading through the 30,000 bugs doesn't sound like time savings at all.
>
>
>