velocity dev Was: Re: [PATCH / PROPOSAL] number support

[Nathan Bubna <na...@esha.com>]

Peter said:
>   Mhhh... I start to think that this project does not want
> contributions and development. :( Are the core developers
> too busy to proceed in the development process?

i wonder myself...
but, i can certainly sympathize if busyness is the problem.
between school, paid work, and life-in-general i haven't gotten to do any
leisure or volunteer coding in quite a while either.  i've always kinda
wanted to get into working velocity general, but i haven't had time and
there's not any coming up in the foreseeable future.  so, i can't really
complain...

but, that doesn't stop me from trying to encourage others to step up a bit!
:-)

i think the inactivity of late has been mostly due to three causes:
1.  the current product is working well for most people.
2.  a lot of the changes people talk about are fairly major and/or
controversial ones that the current committers don't seem to need
themselves.  this understandably leaves them fairly unmotivated to move on
things.
3. geir is rather busy with other things.  (geir, correct me if i'm wrong
there, but i believe you said something to that effect a bit back.)

so, if you want progress, you'll probably have to do a fair bit of it
yourself.  read these if you haven't already:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/getinvolved.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/contributing.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/roles.html

if you want something to work, documentation always seems a bit lacking on
things around here!  there's also the TODO
(http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/todo.html), but those things have been
there forever and no one seems all that interested in those.

i think most patches (that don't break backwards compatibility) seem to get
fair consideration.  the one exception might be patches concerning
float/double support (sorry to say), because of how controversial they seem
to be.

regardless, i've found i often need to give gentle reminders from time to
time until a patch gets submitted.  otherwise things seem to get agreement,
put off for a little while, and are then forgotten and lost under the
unceasing flow of email and work.  someone really has to take time to
organize votes and summarize results for the list.

on the topic of votes, i have some concern over whether any major changes
are even possible at this point.  i only see 10 committers listed for
velocity, and most of them i haven't seen around in a very long time.
getting three +1's for big stuff might be a challenge (or does geir's vote
count as three? :)

...
>We
> had the very good patch from James Taylor with the Map Support,
> which all liked a lot. Why is there no voting process for the
> syntax? And why is there even no discussion anymore?
...

yeah, progress on this is deserved and desired.  and i also think it's
getting 'bout time to release 1.3.1.  it's been out there without complaint
for a while.

does Velocity even have a roadmap?  i think that'd be a really good thing.
the TODO page is all i see and that hardly qualifies as a roadmap.  i'd like
to see something that outlines some goals for 1.4 and perhaps a 2.0 (which
might be a place to really dig into the whitespace issue).  something like
that might give people a better idea of where things are headed and get them
more involved.  hopefully, someday i'll find some time to work on more than
the tools subproject (not that i'm doing much even there lately).

Nathan Bubna
nathan@esha.com


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Re: velocity dev Was: Re: [PATCH / PROPOSAL] number support

["Geir Magnusson Jr." <ge...@adeptra.com>]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 09:51 PM, Nathan Bubna wrote:

>

> i think the inactivity of late has been mostly due to three causes:
> 1.  the current product is working well for most people.
> 2.  a lot of the changes people talk about are fairly major and/or
> controversial ones that the current committers don't seem to need
> themselves.  this understandably leaves them fairly unmotivated to 
> move on
> things.
> 3. geir is rather busy with other things.  (geir, correct me if i'm 
> wrong
> there, but i believe you said something to that effect a bit back.)

I did get totally hosed.  More than I ever had in my life.  Last 
weekend, I decided that I need a balance, and Velocity was how I would 
start to restore that balance, after I reintroduced myself to that 
woman who lives with me that documents that I have say is my wife :)

  We had a few nice things queued up, and then the universe dumped on me 
and ate my Entourage mailbox.  That was my life.  Yes, I shouldn't use 
MSFT products.  Yes, I should have backed it up more often (see 'I did 
get totally hosed...').

> if you want something to work, documentation always seems a bit 
> lacking on
> things around here!  there's also the TODO
> (http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/todo.html), but those things have 
> been
> there forever and no one seems all that interested in those.
>

I hate the TODO :)

> i think most patches (that don't break backwards compatibility) seem 
> to get
> fair consideration.  the one exception might be patches concerning
> float/double support (sorry to say), because of how controversial they 
> seem
> to be.
>

But we have evolved on that.  I don't think that there has been any 
opposition to allowing comparison, and we have patches to try it 
(resubmit the patches please...)

>
> yeah, progress on this is deserved and desired.  and i also think it's
> getting 'bout time to release 1.3.1.  it's been out there without 
> complaint
> for a while.
>

Will do :)


-- 
Geir Magnusson Jr                                   203-355-2219(w)
Adeptra, Inc.                                       203-247-1713(m)
geirm@adeptra.com


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RE: velocity dev Was: Re: [PATCH / PROPOSAL] number support

[Peter Romianowski <me...@gmx.de>]

> but, that doesn't stop me from trying to encourage others to 
> step up a bit!
> :-)
> 
> i think the inactivity of late has been mostly due to three causes:
> 1.  the current product is working well for most people.

  But many people mention the same odds in the users list every now
and then. I agree, the majority is quite happy with everything,
though... 

> 2.  a lot of the changes people talk about are fairly major and/or
> controversial ones that the current committers don't seem to need
> themselves.  this understandably leaves them fairly 
> unmotivated to move on
> things.

  I don't think, that the progress of a project should depend on
"whatever the committers like". This seems strange, especially for a
product with such a big community and so many dependencies (talking
about other products that have integrated velocity).

> 3. geir is rather busy with other things.  (geir, correct me 
> if i'm wrong
> there, but i believe you said something to that effect a bit back.)

  Geir is doing a fine job, in fact he seems to be the only one
responsible for it all (at least it appears so). But a project like
velocity should not be bound to a single person IMHO. The guidelines
for accepting new jakarta-projects explicitly demand a working 
community. So, if Geir is really the only one in charge, then there
should be others stepping up.

> so, if you want progress, you'll probably have to do a fair bit of it
> yourself.  read these if you haven't already:
> http://jakarta.apache.org/site/getinvolved.html
> http://jakarta.apache.org/site/contributing.html
> http://jakarta.apache.org/site/roles.html

  I read that and I already supposed some patches to jakarta-projects
(tomcat / velocity). In fact this thread was about a patch :)
 
> i think most patches (that don't break backwards 
> compatibility) seem to get
> fair consideration.  the one exception might be patches concerning
> float/double support (sorry to say), because of how 
> controversial they seem to be.

  I thought the controversy has gone away. (i.e. it has been solved)

> regardless, i've found i often need to give gentle reminders 
> from time to
> time until a patch gets submitted.

  I agree. It is the same on other projects and we should not forget
(I haven't) that this is all volunteer's work here, which I appreciate
a lot!

> on the topic of votes, i have some concern over whether any 
> major changes
> are even possible at this point.  i only see 10 committers listed for
> velocity, and most of them i haven't seen around in a very long time.
> getting three +1's for big stuff might be a challenge (or 
> does geir's vote
> count as three? :)

  a minimum of three! :) Voting in a small community really seems to be
not applicable. But with some kind of this you could easily decide
thinks and don't have to discuss it forever. Discussion is alway good,
though.
 
Peter


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