Re: Releasing Cocoon 2.2 final

[jo...@verona.se]

Grzegorz Kossakowski <gk...@apache.org> writes:

I'm working on a hobby project with Cocoon 2.2. I have previously
worked on comerial cocoon projects, but it was some time ago.

On returning, I dont think the documentation available now is all that
bad. There are, however, some holes that makes it difficult to get
started. I think you need user feedback to find these holes.

For instance, I spent quite some time yesterday trying to get a simple
cforms application working becaue of these reasons:

- It is not clear where to get forms-samples-styling.xsl
- it is not clear how to propagate the dojo uri to the styling xsl:s
- I failed to propagate a simple jx-flow list to a selectionlist
field( I still dont understand why)

(I followed the forms examples btw)

So to summarize, I think cocoon needs quite some more user feedback,
and the problems can then be fixed rather easily to improve perceived
quality a lot. Quality will not improve a lot at this point by trying
to guess what users will do when cocoon is released.


(also i had a problem with memory not being returned by the cache,
described in other thread)


> Carsten Ziegeler pisze:
>> Grzegorz Kossakowski wrote:
>>> Do you remember that we have released RC1 but have not announced it yet?
>> Yes, so the release is actually worthless - releasing without anyone
>> telling is like writing a book and never publishing it.
>
> On the other hand, without docs such an announcement can spoil our
> hard work. Imagine flood of mails on user mailing list asking, where
> on the hell are docs for C2.2. We need something published.
>
>>> The only reason for this situation is that we don't have new site
>>> published yet. There is no documentation about C2.2 officially published
>>> so it's nonsense to announce it.
>> Yes, so why not just publish the docs and release? What are we *really*
>> waiting for? I really doubt that the documentation situation will get
>> better the longer we wait. So let's just use what is there - we will see
>> if it's sufficient or not.
>
> What we really waiting for? My own list is:
> 1. Creating docs (or at least one document) for
> cocoon-servlet-service. I assign this task to myself and I'm willing
> to provide some prototype *today*.
> 2. Structure adjustments. There are already some documents that are at
> wrong locations or are unreachable at all. It's really task for few
> hours of clicking around Daisy.
> 3. AFAIK, there are some infrastructure glitches but I don't know details.
>
> There is a document http://cocoon.zones.apache.org/daisy/cdocs/g4/1346.html describing the status of our documentation.
>
> My personal opinion is that if few folks started to work on docs right
> away, we could have it in shape within one or two days because really
> thin work is left.
>
> I hope that Reinhard can comment more on this.
>
>>> <snip/>
>>> I'm speaking about it because I would like to release Cocoon 2.2 soon,
>>> too.
>> Once i had the dream that we could release 2.2 in 2005, then i had this
>> very realistic dream of releasing it by the end of 2006 - but in the end
>> these were all just dreams, so i stopped dreaming.
>
> Yes, I've seen these dreams. Cocoon has a long tradition of being
> unable to make releases timely. Currently, I'm very motivated to
> abandon this hurting-all-of-us tradition.
>
>>> Then my preference is to take following steps:
>>>   1. Release 2.1.11 and almost completely freeze 2.1.x branch. We could
>>> agree to allow only critical fixes to go there.
>> +1
>>
>>>   2. Release 2.2 version of core and 1.0 version of various blocks. Move
>>> cocoon-core:2.2 to maintenance branch and allow bug fixes and small
>>> improvements. Same for blocks released as 1.0.
>> +1
>>
>>>   3. We could start development of cocoon-core:2.3 in trunk. Blocks that
>>> would depend on cocoon-core:2.3 could be released as 1.1.0 because it's
>>> a major change to their dependency. Of course, if block is changed
>>> significantly in some other way than change in dependencies it would be
>>> released as 1.1.0 too.
>> +1
>>
>>> I also think that we could release cocoon-core:2.3 just after I finish
>>> changes to Object Model and Expression handling so people can benefit
>>> from it right away.
>> +1
>>
>> Now all you really need are some more committers who would like to
>> support this plan - and that's the really hard part. One indication of
>> interest is the very low participation in this thread....
>
> No matter how sad is it, you are right. I have nothing good to say
> about this situation. I only hope that people ignored this thread
> because of highly technical subject. I changed it hoping I'm right...
>
> -- 
> Grzegorz Kossakowski
> http://reflectingonthevicissitudes.wordpress.com/

-- 
Joakim Verona