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Posted to embperl@perl.apache.org by Neil Gunton <ne...@nilspace.com> on 2003/09/17 04:48:19 UTC
What's going on with Embperl???
I am getting more than a little nervous about the future of Embperl.
I've written to the list before about this, but I didn't get anything
more than "it's ok, don't worry" from Gerald. But then, it was back to
usual - relative lack of responsiveness on his part, no new bugfixes for
the beta... I appreciate greatly his contribution of Embperl to the open
source community, believe me, and I use the package extensively in my
work - which is exactly why I am getting so nervous. There has been a
long period of apparently no progress on 2.0, and increasingly Gerald
seems to be absent from this list. I understand he must be very busy on
his own business (that's always the standard assumption), but given my
own code investment, I would appreciate an honest appraisal of where we
are. Do I need to start looking elsewhere? Anyone got any clues? I wrote
Gerald privately almost two weeks ago, and have still received no reply.
Is he on vacation? Why not mention this to the list?
If it came down to Gerald no longer having the time to develop the
project, then should we try to take it on ourselves? I don't even know
the protocol or etiquette for doing that. I mean, it's Gerald's thing,
his totally, and I don't want for a second to take it away or even try
to fork the project without his blessing. I'm not even at all certain
that I *could* take it on. To be honest, I haven't even had time to
delve into the code - there's a large amount of it. I am experienced in
C++, more so than Perl in fact. Any thoughts from other longtime users?
Can we help Gerald? I suggested exactly this in my last private email to
him (sent couple weeks ago, no reply). So here I am not so much trying
to bipass Gerald, as just taking the next step to see what others think.
If I am totally out of line then please tell me and I'll shut up. But if
anyone else has the same fears as me, then it would at least be
reassuring to know that I'm not alone. I'm very willing to let Gerald
take his time on this stuff if that's all he needs, but this is just
something that's been niggling at the back of my head for a while now
and I wanted to get it out in the open. Let me stress again that I am
very supportive of Gerald and would like to make this work - I even
offered to try and have a go at writing an (English) book on Embperl,
perhaps some sort of cookbook format. I am pretty busy with my own
stuff, and have quite enough on my plate developing application-level
stuff, but if it was clear that this would be welcomed by both Gerald
and the community then it might be worth spending the time on. Even if
it wasn't picked up by a real publisher, it might be useful as an online
book. Also, obviously, development, if feasible - but I have the feeling
that there are *much* more capable developers on this list than me.
Believe me, I want to see Embperl develop and succeed. But the list
traffic is way down, and there haven't been any real progress on the 2.0
beta in so long...
Anyone got any advice on this "elephant in the room"?
TIA
/Neil
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Ruben I Safir <ru...@mrbrklyn.com>.
You mena like CVS and RCS and tar balls.
Sorceforge is a PIA
On 2003.09.17 11:27 Neil Gunton wrote:
> Ruben I Safir wrote:
> >
> > I hate sourceforge
>
> Why?
>
> Ok, is there a better environment for coordinating distributed teams of
> open source developers? As I mentioned a while back, I used SourceForge
> on an internal project in a large bank in NYC. It was useful mostly for
> its bug tracking system, which wasn't perfect but I had no real problems
> with it... I think my team leader disliked it primarily because it is
> web-based. But it did work... they were using an internal version from
> before it became non-open source. I haven't used the latest "official"
> version.
> O
> f course this is all moot as it's really up to Gerald to decide, but I
> think all discussion of the possibilities is useful, if only for
> interest sake...
>
> /Neil
>
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--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Neil Gunton <ne...@nilspace.com>.
Ruben I Safir wrote:
>
> I hate sourceforge
Why?
Ok, is there a better environment for coordinating distributed teams of
open source developers? As I mentioned a while back, I used SourceForge
on an internal project in a large bank in NYC. It was useful mostly for
its bug tracking system, which wasn't perfect but I had no real problems
with it... I think my team leader disliked it primarily because it is
web-based. But it did work... they were using an internal version from
before it became non-open source. I haven't used the latest "official"
version.
O
f course this is all moot as it's really up to Gerald to decide, but I
think all discussion of the possibilities is useful, if only for
interest sake...
/Neil
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Ruben I Safir <ru...@mrbrklyn.com>.
I hate sourceforge
On 2003.09.17 06:21 Robert wrote:
> Neil Gunton wrote:
>
> >I am getting more than a little nervous about the future of Embperl.
> >
> >
> So do I. And I agree with others on this thread on help, SourceForge,
> maybe even some kind of financial support. I was slowly converting my
> 40+ web sites to EmbperlObject during last 2 years and I'm really REALLY
> looking forward for all the cool stuff EP2 will bring, but I can't use
> it before it's out of beta. I don't think anybody but Gerald can finish
> it reasonably fast, but then again, should Gerald stop working on EP,
> I'd feel better if there were plan B. So Gerald, what do you think about
> this SourceForge thing?
>
> - Robert
>
>
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--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Robert <ro...@robert.cz>.
Neil Gunton wrote:
>I am getting more than a little nervous about the future of Embperl.
>
>
So do I. And I agree with others on this thread on help, SourceForge,
maybe even some kind of financial support. I was slowly converting my
40+ web sites to EmbperlObject during last 2 years and I'm really REALLY
looking forward for all the cool stuff EP2 will bring, but I can't use
it before it's out of beta. I don't think anybody but Gerald can finish
it reasonably fast, but then again, should Gerald stop working on EP,
I'd feel better if there were plan B. So Gerald, what do you think about
this SourceForge thing?
- Robert
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Kaare Rasmussen <ka...@kakidata.dk>.
> I am getting more than a little nervous about the future of Embperl.
It is a valid concern. Embperl is great, but 2.0 has been in development for
two or three years already - with a big red RSN-label on top.
Gerald privately almost two weeks ago, and have still received no reply.
> Is he on vacation? Why not mention this to the list?
I guess Gerald is just as bad as planning his time as the rest of us :-)
> If it came down to Gerald no longer having the time to develop the
> project, then should we try to take it on ourselves? I don't even know
> the protocol or etiquette for doing that. I mean, it's Gerald's thing,
> his totally, and I don't want for a second to take it away or even try
> to fork the project without his blessing. I'm not even at all certain
Hostile take-over is not the way. Unless Gerald vanishes into thin air, of
course.
I still hope that he will get back and finish 2.0. But even then, the question
remains - quo vadis ?
Even if Gerald has got the time in the future, I think Embperl would benefit
from being set up for more developers. You know, Sourceforge and stuff. But
that's up to him to decide.
> very supportive of Gerald and would like to make this work - I even
> offered to try and have a go at writing an (English) book on Embperl,
Embperl could be the engine for a lot of things on the Net. But as long as 2.0
is unfinished, the use of it will lack behind. I think that Gerald is the
only one who can finish it in a relatively short period of time. Others will
have to learn the code first. I suspect it will be a big task.
> Believe me, I want to see Embperl develop and succeed. But the list
> traffic is way down, and there haven't been any real progress on the 2.0
> beta in so long...
I'm holding off myself until 2.0 is finished. I know others do too.
--
Kaare Rasmussen --Linux, spil,-- Tlf: 3816 2582
Kaki Data tshirts, merchandize Fax: 3816 2501
Howitzvej 75 Åben 12.00-18.00 Email: kar@kakidata.dk
2000 Frederiksberg Lørdag 12.00-16.00 Web: www.suse.dk
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Terrence Brannon <tb...@directsynergy.com>.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Neil Gunton" <ne...@nilspace.com>
To: "embperl" <em...@perl.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 7:48 PM
Subject: What's going on with Embperl???
> I even
> offered to try and have a go at writing an (English) book on Embperl,
> perhaps some sort of cookbook format. I
I have been working on making DBIx::Recordset docs more readable by
creating documentation with runnable sourcecode:
http://search.cpan.org/author/TBONE/DBIx-Recordset-Playground-1.0/Playground
.pm
In the process I created a sample database schema which currently will
install
on MySQL and SQLite, but because of the source of the schema, Sybase and
Oracle are
also immediately possible:
http://search.cpan.org/author/TBONE/DBSchema-Sample-1.1/lib/DBSchema/Sample/
SQLite.pm
And the ultimate goal is to make Recordset as immediately useable as
Class::DBI... part of my problem
is that I don't want to force the method of $dbh creation on others.
Class::DBI is an integrated product.
Personally , I catalog my database connections with DBIx::Connect:
http://search.cpan.org/author/TBONE/DBIx-Connect-1.13/
and could easily extend this to make connections to specfic tables via
Recordset, but then that forces others
to use AppConfig and DBIx::Connect
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Kaare Rasmussen <ka...@kakidata.dk>.
Hi
> Embperl is already in a publicly readable cvs server, see CVS.pod in
> your nearest Embperl source. Daily snapshot tars, etc available too.
So no need for Sourceforge.
> Embperl, being on CPAN, can use the rt.cpan.org bug tracker if needed.
Maybe it could be - if bug reports are being lost as might be concluded from
Neil Gunton's story about nested <DL>'s. Or maybe his bug report is just in a
big pile of other bugs that Gerald hasn't had the time to look into.
> Neither of these actually fix bugs - people fix bugs. These tools are
But "people" may not be many more than Gerald and maybe you. I don't know if
Neil has an idea about fixing that bug, but most of us are very busy with our
own projects. So much that it would be damaging to these projects to dig deep
into the internals of Embperl.
> Having said that, as Embperl Debian maintainer I'm very happy to
> accept patches and coordinate bug reports through
Personally I don't know of any outstanding bugs and I'd like to see a release
of 2.0. I think it will help Embperl to be used more - which is needed.
> From what I can see, the main thing holding up Embperl 2.0 is updated
> documentation. Patches cleaning up or consolidating the various bits
People on this list has talked about various kinds of involment. Now is the
time to keep the promises.
One other thing I'd like to see is some kind of coordination - or a greater
level of sharing - og Embperl sources. I think that there ought to be a lot
of code out there that could easily be shared. Both snippets, solutions and
projects.
--
Kaare Rasmussen --Linux, spil,-- Tlf: 3816 2582
Kaki Data tshirts, merchandize Fax: 3816 2501
Howitzvej 75 Åben 12.00-18.00 Email: kar@kakidata.dk
2000 Frederiksberg Lørdag 12.00-16.00 Web: www.suse.dk
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Angus Lees <gu...@inodes.org>.
Embperl is already in a publicly readable cvs server, see CVS.pod in
your nearest Embperl source. Daily snapshot tars, etc available too.
Embperl, being on CPAN, can use the rt.cpan.org bug tracker if needed.
Neither of these actually fix bugs - people fix bugs. These tools are
useful if you have to coordinate a large number of bug reports and
patches coming in from all over the place - not something I see
happening with Embperl at the moment. I would suggest such
contributions get mentioned on this list anyway, even if we had an
active bug tracking system.
Having said that, as Embperl Debian maintainer I'm very happy to
accept patches and coordinate bug reports through
bugs.debian.org/libembperl-perl - even if you aren't a Debian user.
For people interested, the accumulated Debian patches are always
available as a separate .diff.gz against the pristine upstream source,
so should be easy for other people to integrate these patches too.
So, if you feel that Gerald is being unresponsive, you can pass your
bug fixes/reports on to me (via the embperl mailing list ideally) and
I should be able to do something useful with them.
From what I can see, the main thing holding up Embperl 2.0 is updated
documentation. Patches cleaning up or consolidating the various bits
of HTML::Embperl 1.3, mid-Embperl2-development and final Embperl
documentation would be very useful. When doing so, be aware that
Config.pod is automatically generated, so design your improvements
to that file accordingly.
--
- Gus
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Re: 2.0 testing
Posted by Neil Gunton <ne...@nilspace.com>.
Kaare Rasmussen wrote:
> What kind of bugs ?
See thread titled "Re: Nested <DL> Bug in 2.0b9" started on July 2nd,
continued on August 10th (Gerald said, in summary, that no progress on
the bug had been made). This is when I suggested use of SourceForge for
bug tracking.
Incidentally, I still think that 2.0 would be better if it was able to
take existing 1.x code unchanged. This was already discussed, and Gerald
asserted that 1.x code should work unchanged in 2.0. But (apparently due
to bugs rather than design) this still isn't the case. See thread titled
"Re: Testing 2.x with production 1.x code" from early July. Again, I
haven't heard anything from Gerald on this since then.
I have a lot of code, and I can't change it to break my production 1.x
system until 2.x is more stable. If you're working with new code then
this may not be a problem, but it's certainly a showstopper for me.
Until I can get my existing 1.x sites working under 2.0b without having
to make changes that break 1.x, I can't do real testing. I mean "real"
as in real users hitting it on a daily basis - I'd love to be able to do
this, if I could be able to roll back to 1.x until any bugs discovered
are cleared up, at which point I could plug the new 2.0b back in and go
again.
/Neil
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Neil Gunton <ne...@nilspace.com>.
Luiz Fernando wrote:
> I think Gerald should setup a sourceforge account for Embperl and put
> more people to help him, more on the traditional opensource format.
>
> We could try to fix small bugs and implement some features under his
> supervision.
>
> If the problem is money we can help also, since many of us use Embperl
> commercially.
>
> If the problem is time, a problem almost everybody has, we should
> organize ourselves with Gerald and see what can be done.
I agree totally. Just to be clear - I am not suggesting any kind of
"hostile" takeover of the code. I think that Gerald is definitely the
best person to lead, because it's quite simply his thing, totally. But I
think the above ideas are good ones, and make sense given that Gerald
seems to be "away" a lot - others could potentially help with stuff even
when he doesn't have the time (in the more formal environment that
SourceForge provides)... but it's really up to him in the end. I
suggested a few weeks ago opening a SourceForge account, simply for the
bug tracking tools it provides, but Gerald seemed content with his text
"TODO" file. This is indicative of a single person project - I don't
know if he wants to be convinced to move it into a more multi-person
environment or not. I know that it's simply human nature to want to hold
on to your stuff and keep control over it - I experience this, we all
do. But I think it would be better for the project to have more people
working on it... of course, I also realize that we could all be doing
that right now, submitting patches and fixes to Gerald via email. I'm
not certain how SourceForge would change that, except by giving a more
formal bug tracking environment... perhaps if it were more obvious *how*
people could get involved directly with the code, then more people
would... I think I would, if there was some sort of community push to
get the thing fixed. But in the end, we're all victims of the same thing
- our time is limited (just like Gerald). Still, I think it's worth at
least talking about, see what Gerald thinks.
I just wanted to air some concerns and see what people think. Hopefully
when Gerald returns he will see all of this as constructive rather than
complaining... Embperl could continue to be something really good. I'd
really hate to see it fade. It seems that Template Toolkit and Mason are
getting more airplay these days, and of course PHP is the 800 lb gorilla
in the open source scripting world.
Incidentally, there is a bit of a chicken and egg situation with 2.0 -
it can't come out of beta unless people test it, yet people are
unwilling to test it until it is more stable. Well, we should all make
the effort to at least install it and see how it works with our existing
code. I have done this and forwarded a couple of bugs to Gerald at the
beginning of August (but nothing happened, which is part of the reason
for the current discussion)... but I'd love to see faster resolution of
these bugs so that the project can move toward the 2.0 release and we
can all convert our sites to 2.0...
/Neil
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Re: What's going on with Embperl???
Posted by Luiz Fernando <lu...@engenhosolucoes.com.br>.
Hi all,
I think Gerald should setup a sourceforge account for Embperl and put
more people to help him, more on the traditional opensource format.
We could try to fix small bugs and implement some features under his
supervision.
If the problem is money we can help also, since many of us use Embperl
commercially.
If the problem is time, a problem almost everybody has, we should
organize ourselves with Gerald and see what can be done.
Just some thoughts.
Regards,
--
Luiz Fernando Ribeiro
Engenho Soluções S/C Ltda
On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 23:48, Neil Gunton wrote:
> I am getting more than a little nervous about the future of Embperl.
> I've written to the list before about this, but I didn't get anything
> more than "it's ok, don't worry" from Gerald. But then, it was back to
> usual - relative lack of responsiveness on his part, no new bugfixes for
> the beta... I appreciate greatly his contribution of Embperl to the open
> source community, believe me, and I use the package extensively in my
> work - which is exactly why I am getting so nervous. There has been a
> long period of apparently no progress on 2.0, and increasingly Gerald
> seems to be absent from this list. I understand he must be very busy on
> his own business (that's always the standard assumption), but given my
> own code investment, I would appreciate an honest appraisal of where we
> are. Do I need to start looking elsewhere? Anyone got any clues? I wrote
> Gerald privately almost two weeks ago, and have still received no reply.
> Is he on vacation? Why not mention this to the list?
>
> If it came down to Gerald no longer having the time to develop the
> project, then should we try to take it on ourselves? I don't even know
> the protocol or etiquette for doing that. I mean, it's Gerald's thing,
> his totally, and I don't want for a second to take it away or even try
> to fork the project without his blessing. I'm not even at all certain
> that I *could* take it on. To be honest, I haven't even had time to
> delve into the code - there's a large amount of it. I am experienced in
> C++, more so than Perl in fact. Any thoughts from other longtime users?
> Can we help Gerald? I suggested exactly this in my last private email to
> him (sent couple weeks ago, no reply). So here I am not so much trying
> to bipass Gerald, as just taking the next step to see what others think.
> If I am totally out of line then please tell me and I'll shut up. But if
> anyone else has the same fears as me, then it would at least be
> reassuring to know that I'm not alone. I'm very willing to let Gerald
> take his time on this stuff if that's all he needs, but this is just
> something that's been niggling at the back of my head for a while now
> and I wanted to get it out in the open. Let me stress again that I am
> very supportive of Gerald and would like to make this work - I even
> offered to try and have a go at writing an (English) book on Embperl,
> perhaps some sort of cookbook format. I am pretty busy with my own
> stuff, and have quite enough on my plate developing application-level
> stuff, but if it was clear that this would be welcomed by both Gerald
> and the community then it might be worth spending the time on. Even if
> it wasn't picked up by a real publisher, it might be useful as an online
> book. Also, obviously, development, if feasible - but I have the feeling
> that there are *much* more capable developers on this list than me.
>
> Believe me, I want to see Embperl develop and succeed. But the list
> traffic is way down, and there haven't been any real progress on the 2.0
> beta in so long...
>
> Anyone got any advice on this "elephant in the room"?
>
> TIA
>
> /Neil
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