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Posted to dev@geronimo.apache.org by Dain Sundstrom <da...@coredevelopers.net> on 2003/09/06 23:11:25 UTC
State of the Project
The first month of our project has seen a deluge of volunteers, email
and code. Indeed, for the first few days we had so many volunteers
that it was almost impossible to keep up with the influx. Many of the
initial volunteers stuck around and are actively participating. The
email volume of the last month is shocking. We have had over three
thousand messages on the list, and for the first few days we were
getting hundreds of emails a day. The volume has settled down to a
much more manageable level, and the discussions have improved as a
result. It has been amazing to see the small code seed we started with
grow into a two and a half megabyte source bundle. Even with this
massive growth, the code base has remained stable (the build has only
been broken a few times).
Given these signs, we declare the state of the project to be healthy
and vibrant.
The momentum of the project is huge, and it appears we have reached the
critical mass required for a success. However, we have some challenges
to overcome. One of these is the nature of discussions on the mailing
list - we have had many bike shed type discussions thrashing minute
details to death but choking out larger topics. In some cases, this
has resulted in contributors collaborating offline and major changes
happening with little public discussion. This issue is gradually
working itself out, but we all need to be aware of this tendency and
work to keep discussions on the list more focused.
Another challenge facing us is how to grow the committer base. There
is some perception of a cathedral clique of insiders, whereas in
reality, many of the project management issues have arisen because the
current committers are not used to working together and are new to the
Apache Way. With the initial startup phase behind us, we will be
looking to expand the project rapidly over the next couple of months.
Geronimo is a complex project with many collaborating subsystems and
significant progress has been made in many areas.
BUILD SYSTEM
Our build system came together surprisingly quickly. We have support
for multiple modules and an amazing auto-generated web site from maven.
Jason Dillon is currently working out the structure of our final
build, and Dain Sundstrom and David Blevins will be setting up an
integration testing system next week.
SPECIFICATION APIs
Some of the least exciting but most critical work has been the
provision of unencumbered versions of the specification APIs. Credit
goes to Maas van den Berg and Aaron Mulder for much of this work, with
a special mention of Alex Blewitt for diligently building out the
JavaMail API which contains substantial concrete implementation.
SERVICE FOUNDATION
Using JMX as a kernel technology has facilitated the manageability of
the system. A GeronimoMBean has been added, intended to be the basis
for other services in Geronimo. This MBean provides support for
multiple managed objects and implements the managed object, state
manageable and event provider interfaces from the J2EE Management
specification. Dain Sundstrom will be adding persistence capability,
allowing the server configuration to be preserved between restarts.
CONSOLE
A console subsystem is in progress with web and command-line based
interfaces under development by N. Alex Rupp and Matt Kurjanowicz.
There are also plans for a GUI console once a common structure has been
determined.
DEPLOYMENT
A common deployment architecture has been defined, supporting local and
remote modules, dependencies between deployed components, and pluggable
deployment strategies. Currently deployment is provided for service
archives containing MBeans; support will be added soon for Web, EJB and
Connector modules. Scanners have been implemented for both local and
remote (WebDAV) filesystems.
REMOTING
Hiram Chirino has implemented a remoting framework for routing
invocation requests both within and between VMs, freeing containers
from the need to handle wire protocols and failover. The current code
supports both synchronous and asynchronous communication and is built
on NIO. Future work will add IIOP support using the simple RMI/IIOP
ORB, allowing us to meet the requirements of the J2EE specification.
METADATA
We have defined a format for Geronimo-specific deployment descriptors
and have added a basic object model for representing them in memory. A
simple loader is in place based on Xerces and DOM, and investigation is
proceeding into more effective XML binding based on the XMLBeans
project. Aaron Mulder has been responsible for much of the initial
implementation, and he is continuing work on J2EE Deployment (JSR 88)
and Validation.
CLIENT CONTAINER
Jeremy Boynes has implemented an Application Client Container as a
starting point for enterprise container functionality. This includes a
simple implementation of the java:comp Environment Naming Context with
support for env-entry and ejb-ref elements. Basic interoperability
with external J2EE servers has been tested and full support will come
with the introduction of IIOP remoting.
SECURITY
A start has been made on security by David Blevins and Alan Cabrera in
the form of a JACC (JSR 115) implementation which, combined with JAAS,
will provide a pluggable authentication and authorization framework.
With many of the basic services now in place, we expect to start work
soon on the EJB containers and hopefully will have Session and BMP
Entity support available within the next month.
In other areas, co-ordination has started with the OpenJMS and LDAPd
projects to facilitate the integration of technology, and discussion
has started with ObjectWeb to allow the sharing of technology between
the two projects.
This has been a phenomenal first month in which huge progress has been
made. Much of the technical groundwork has now been laid and we can
look forward to the challenges of the EJB and Connector subsystems.
The Geronimo Project
Re: State of the Project
Posted by Siva <si...@sivasundaram.com>.
Good summary dain.
Can we keep track of all these issues which are completed/progressing in the
STATUS file along with the exit criteria?
Siva
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dain Sundstrom" <da...@coredevelopers.net>
To: <ge...@incubator.apache.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 2:41 AM
Subject: State of the Project
Re: State of the Project
Posted by Jim Jagielski <ji...@apache.org>.
On Saturday, September 6, 2003, at 05:11 PM, Dain Sundstrom wrote:
>
> Another challenge facing us is how to grow the committer base. There
> is some perception of a cathedral clique of insiders, whereas in
> reality, many of the project management issues have arisen because the
> current committers are not used to working together and are new to the
> Apache Way. With the initial startup phase behind us, we will be
> looking to expand the project rapidly over the next couple of months.
>
>
One of the key aspects of the Incubator is to *ensure* that the project
does incorporate and "embrace" the core ideals of the "Apache Way."
Even if this means being a bottleneck on growing and expanding.
Within the Incubator, the prime considerations be:
1. Is this a worthy and healthy project
2. Does it truly fit within the ASF framework
3. Do they "get" the Apache Way.
It's obvious that #1 and #2 are a resounding "Yes", but it is still
too early to answer #3 yet. Moreover, more effort must be placed on
doing this, now that the initial startup is complete. This should
start being more a focus within the project. For example,
although the infrastructure requirements for ASF projects are
minimal, it's usually expected that ASF projects will use
ASF infrastructure almost exclusively. The move to Codehaus'
Wiki, although acceptable (IMO, else I would have complained),
could give a wrong impression.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but an ASF Project is
more than just the ability to have the "Apache" name associated
with it or an "alternate" place to drop your code. It's a
organic and collaborative environment of code and coders that
have that common vision which is what the ASF is all about.
I have no doubt that this will be the case, but I'd be
amiss by not making sure everyone knows that acceptance
as a ASF Incubated project does not ensure graduation into
an actual ASF project. If any committer or developer is
curious, I'd really urge them to check out www.apache.org
and incubator.apache.org
Re: State of the Project
Posted by Jim Jagielski <ji...@jagunet.com>.
Dain,
In the future, please CC pmc@incubator.apache.org as well.
Thanks!