Graduation plan (draft)

[Alexander Broekhuis <a....@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

In a previous thread I already mentioned we need to work on a graduation
plan. Although the discussions surrounding the incubator and the state of
the projects still isn't finished, I do think it is a good idea to start
writing such plan.

Our next report is due in April, I'd like to have something written down
before the deadline.

Below I have written a first draft for what I think are important aspects
for a graduation plan. Feel free to comment on it, send new/missing ideas
etc!

======
Graduation Plan

Celix is in incubation since November 2010. During the first one and a half
year talks where given at several conferences (EclipseCon, ApacheCon, OSGi
User Group meetings, etc).
Even though there seems to be an interest in the project, two important
questions keep coming up:
- What is the state of the project?
- Why no support for C++?

Trying to answer/solve these two questions might make it able to attract
more community members. So this plan will focus mostly on these two items.

= State of the project

== Releases
Celix enterend incubation in its early stage. There was only a proof of
concept, but no complete implementation.
This is an important reason for people to hold back and not yet use/improve
Celix, on the other hand,  being hesitant also keeps Celix from growing
towards a more stable/robust solution.
To be able to use Celix the implementation has to reach, at least, a more
stable state. Over the past year lots of effort has been put into this.
Within the next half year a release has to be made of the core component of
Celix. Hopefully this will attract more users/testers (and potentially
committers).

== Committers
Since the start of Celix there is only one committer. There have been no
changes towards more. To be able to have a diverse community more
committers are needed.
Having a release makes it easier for people to use and improve Celix. This
is one step towards more committers.
Over the last month there has been an interest from Thales Netherlands to
use Celix in its middleware. In a research project they are working on an
implementation of the Device Access specification. This implementation will
be donated to Celix, and the main developer has expressed the intention to
maintain the code base. Via this path a new committer will be added to
Celix within the next month [1].

[1]: http://markmail.org/thread/hfwuspl3swoisenq

= C++ Support

== Technical Scope
Currently Celix is limited to C only. This was a deliberate choice since
Celix tries to target  embedded/constrained platforms. But during talks
people also seem to be interested in C++ support. Extending the technical
scope of the project might attract more users and committers.
Over the next half year we will work out a plan how C++ support can be
added without impacting the current supported platforms. A start with the
discussions has been made on the mailinglist, see [2] for more information.

[2]: http://markmail.org/thread/a3qltqhsocmrnerd

== Cooperate with existing C++ OSGi like implementations
In [2] a list of similar projects is mentioned. Reaching out to these
project and trying to find a common ground on requirements/API etc could
benefit Celix (and those projects as well).
To see if there is a common ground we need to contact those projects and
plan a meeting.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groet,

Alexander Broekhuis