Efficiently contributing to the Synapse project

[Auke Schrijnen <as...@bkwi.nl>]

Hi Synapse devs,

After comparing several ESB frameworks we decided to use Apache Synapse to replace our home-built ESB-like application, together with Axis2 for our webservices. Although both frameworks offer a lot of features we have to extend them in various ways to support our needs, especially Synapse. And as any software project, Synapse isn't bug-free and unfortunately we already ran into some.

I have already reported a couple of issues and improvements and supplied patches for some of them. As we use git and Apache supplies git mirrors at git.apache.org and github.com i used 'git format-patch' to create the patches. The subversion repository for Synapse has an issue with the project structure (INFRA-3800 / SYNAPSE-888) which makes it difficult to switch from 2.1 to trunk and to compare differences between those branches. It would be very useful for us this issue gets fixed, which makes it a lot easier to test and supply fixes.

Having that said, what is the best way for you to get fixes? Some Apache projects use Github pull request because it provides a platform to easily share patches and openly discuss them (with tools like inline comments). Synapse doesn't seem to use this, is this intended or just because everybody is used to the Apache workflow with subversion?
Is this mailing list the right place for discussion or is there an irc channel for quick questions?

While investigating a solution for SYNAPSE-896 i found a few coding errors, some documentation issues, questionable constructions and room for improvements. That might sound a bit harsh, but i just want to improve the quality of the project. How should i approach those kind of issues? Report issues in Jira? Post emails on this list?

I'm looking forward to use and contribute to the Apache Synapse project!

Auke Schrijnen

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Re: Efficiently contributing to the Synapse project

[Auke Schrijnen <as...@bkwi.nl>]

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Supun Kamburugamuva <su...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Auke Schrijnen <as...@bkwi.nl> wrote:
> > Hi Synapse devs,
> >
> > After comparing several ESB frameworks we decided to use Apache Synapse to replace our home-built ESB-like application, together with Axis2 for our webservices. Although both frameworks offer a lot of features we have to extend them in various ways to support our needs, especially Synapse. And as any software project, Synapse isn't bug-free and unfortunately we already ran into some.
> >
> > I have already reported a couple of issues and improvements and supplied patches for some of them. As we use git and Apache supplies git mirrors at git.apache.org and github.com i used 'git format-patch' to create the patches. The subversion repository for Synapse has an issue with the project structure (INFRA-3800 / SYNAPSE-888) which makes it difficult to switch from 2.1 to trunk and to compare differences between those branches. It would be very useful for us this issue gets fixed, which makes it a lot easier to test and supply fixes.
> >
> > Having that said, what is the best way for you to get fixes? Some Apache projects use Github pull request because it provides a platform to easily share patches and openly discuss them (with tools like inline comments). Synapse doesn't seem to use this, is this intended or just because everybody is used to the Apache workflow with subversion?
> > Is this mailing list the right place for discussion or is there an irc channel for quick questions?
> >
> > While investigating a solution for SYNAPSE-896 i found a few coding errors, some documentation issues, questionable constructions and room for improvements. That might sound a bit harsh, but i just want to improve the quality of the project. How should i approach those kind of issues? Report issues in Jira? Post emails on this list?
> 
> Please feel free to create a Jiras and attach the patches there. We
> would be more than happy to apply those patches to the current trunk.
> Also you can discuss the issues in the mailing lists as well. For
> example if a fix isn't obvious and need some technical input you can
> always discuss that in the mailing list.
> 
> We are glad to hear your commitments to the Synapse and looking
> forward to the contributions.
> 
> +1
> 
> Looking forward to work with you.
> 
> Thanks,
> Hiranya
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> Supun..

Thanks for the warm welcome :)

I understand that attaching patches to Jira issues is the preferred way of receiving contributions, i will continue to do that. It would still be very useful for us to have SYNAPSE-888 fixed! We use the stable 2.1.0 version (2.1 branch) and are currently unable to test patches against trunk due to the svn structure issue.

We are trying to run Synapse within a servlet container (Tomcat 6 in our case) and found some issues with relative paths (SYNAPSE-896) where SYNAPSE_HOME isn't taken into account and issues with the servlet transport (similar to SYNAPSE-777). It looks like Synapse isn't used in a servlet environment very often, or am i wrong here?

The path issues are easy to fix, but it would be much nicer if relative uris in the synapse xml configuration are relative to the synapse configuration directory. That would make uris the same, no matter what kind of deployment one chooses. Now we have to define uri="file:repository/resources/my/file.wsdl" for the standalone deployment and uri="file:WEB-INF/repository/resources/my/file.wsdl" for the war deployment but it would be much cleaner if you just can define uri="file:resources/my/file.wsdl" or even uri="file:my/file.wsdl" (relative to some predefined or configurable resources directory). WDYT?

Is it known to you why the servlet transport is broken? Is it just a bug somewhere or is it a more structural issue due to the asynchronous architecture? We want to investigate the problem but could use some pointers to get started.

Thanks in advance!

Auke


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Re: Efficiently contributing to the Synapse project

[Hiranya Jayathilaka <hi...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Supun Kamburugamuva <su...@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Auke Schrijnen <as...@bkwi.nl>
> wrote:
> > Hi Synapse devs,
> >
> > After comparing several ESB frameworks we decided to use Apache Synapse
> to replace our home-built ESB-like application, together with Axis2 for our
> webservices. Although both frameworks offer a lot of features we have to
> extend them in various ways to support our needs, especially Synapse. And
> as any software project, Synapse isn't bug-free and unfortunately we
> already ran into some.
> >
> > I have already reported a couple of issues and improvements and supplied
> patches for some of them. As we use git and Apache supplies git mirrors at
> git.apache.org and github.com i used 'git format-patch' to create the
> patches. The subversion repository for Synapse has an issue with the
> project structure (INFRA-3800 / SYNAPSE-888) which makes it difficult to
> switch from 2.1 to trunk and to compare differences between those branches.
> It would be very useful for us this issue gets fixed, which makes it a lot
> easier to test and supply fixes.
> >
> > Having that said, what is the best way for you to get fixes? Some Apache
> projects use Github pull request because it provides a platform to easily
> share patches and openly discuss them (with tools like inline comments).
> Synapse doesn't seem to use this, is this intended or just because
> everybody is used to the Apache workflow with subversion?
> > Is this mailing list the right place for discussion or is there an irc
> channel for quick questions?
> >
> > While investigating a solution for SYNAPSE-896 i found a few coding
> errors, some documentation issues, questionable constructions and room for
> improvements. That might sound a bit harsh, but i just want to improve the
> quality of the project. How should i approach those kind of issues? Report
> issues in Jira? Post emails on this list?
>
> Please feel free to create a Jiras and attach the patches there. We
> would be more than happy to apply those patches to the current trunk.
> Also you can discuss the issues in the mailing lists as well. For
> example if a fix isn't obvious and need some technical input you can
> always discuss that in the mailing list.
>
> We are glad to hear your commitments to the Synapse and looking
> forward to the contributions.
>

+1

Looking forward to work with you.

Thanks,
Hiranya


>
> Thanks,
> Supun..
>
> >
> > I'm looking forward to use and contribute to the Apache Synapse project!
> >
> > Auke Schrijnen
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@synapse.apache.org
> > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@synapse.apache.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Supun Kamburugamuva
> Member, Apache Software Foundation; http://www.apache.org
> E-mail: supun06@gmail.com;  Mobile: +94 77 431 3585
> Blog: http://supunk.blogspot.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@synapse.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@synapse.apache.org
>
>


-- 
Hiranya Jayathilaka
Associate Technical Lead;
WSO2 Inc.;  http://wso2.org
E-mail: hiranya@wso2.com;  Mobile: +94 77 633 3491
Blog: http://techfeast-hiranya.blogspot.com

Re: Efficiently contributing to the Synapse project

[Supun Kamburugamuva <su...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Auke Schrijnen <as...@bkwi.nl> wrote:
> Hi Synapse devs,
>
> After comparing several ESB frameworks we decided to use Apache Synapse to replace our home-built ESB-like application, together with Axis2 for our webservices. Although both frameworks offer a lot of features we have to extend them in various ways to support our needs, especially Synapse. And as any software project, Synapse isn't bug-free and unfortunately we already ran into some.
>
> I have already reported a couple of issues and improvements and supplied patches for some of them. As we use git and Apache supplies git mirrors at git.apache.org and github.com i used 'git format-patch' to create the patches. The subversion repository for Synapse has an issue with the project structure (INFRA-3800 / SYNAPSE-888) which makes it difficult to switch from 2.1 to trunk and to compare differences between those branches. It would be very useful for us this issue gets fixed, which makes it a lot easier to test and supply fixes.
>
> Having that said, what is the best way for you to get fixes? Some Apache projects use Github pull request because it provides a platform to easily share patches and openly discuss them (with tools like inline comments). Synapse doesn't seem to use this, is this intended or just because everybody is used to the Apache workflow with subversion?
> Is this mailing list the right place for discussion or is there an irc channel for quick questions?
>
> While investigating a solution for SYNAPSE-896 i found a few coding errors, some documentation issues, questionable constructions and room for improvements. That might sound a bit harsh, but i just want to improve the quality of the project. How should i approach those kind of issues? Report issues in Jira? Post emails on this list?

Please feel free to create a Jiras and attach the patches there. We
would be more than happy to apply those patches to the current trunk.
Also you can discuss the issues in the mailing lists as well. For
example if a fix isn't obvious and need some technical input you can
always discuss that in the mailing list.

We are glad to hear your commitments to the Synapse and looking
forward to the contributions.

Thanks,
Supun..

>
> I'm looking forward to use and contribute to the Apache Synapse project!
>
> Auke Schrijnen
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@synapse.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@synapse.apache.org
>



-- 
Supun Kamburugamuva
Member, Apache Software Foundation; http://www.apache.org
E-mail: supun06@gmail.com;  Mobile: +94 77 431 3585
Blog: http://supunk.blogspot.com

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