Plan for a release/download (was RE: Mavenizing the build)

[Mike Burati <mb...@bowstreet.com>]

Carsten et al,

I guess I would have to agree with that yahoo poster below that a release of
something buildable (even if just a source zip and not binaries) would be
nice.  We've had customers/prospects asking us how to get Pluto since they
couldn't figure it out from http://jakarta.apache.org/pluto/  either.  In
fact, the poster below may be one of our customers/prospects that's asked us
that same question :-)

We got Pluto ourselves via CVS and it built/installed just fine using the
instructions at http://jakarta.apache.org/pluto/install.html and the
GettingStarted.txt included in the jakarta-pluto dir.  The trick is knowing
how to get it in the first place, since the instructions at
http://jakarta.apache.org/pluto/ direct you to download the source from:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/sourceindex.cgi first, and Pluto is nowhere
to be found at that location.

Anyway, just another point of view from a WebApp/Portlet solution company
with customers looking to get their hands on this stuff and get started.  

NOTE:  Stefan brought up the issue of a 1.0 release earlier this month:

    Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 10:53:24 +0100
    From: Stefan Hepper <st...@hursley.ibm.com>
    Subject: Is pluto moving toward a release?

    I'm for creating a 1.0 release with binaries based on the initial drop, 
    as this was the drop that got certified as JSR 168 reference 
    implementation. This way everyone can at least download the certified RI

    without compiling it on their own.

    I'll send a list that I have in a separate mail.


Also NOTE that David DeWolf pointed out in that thread that any release from
an Incubation project would have to go through the process described at:
http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Releases%0D%0A

And another note/question.  The Pluto incubation project status page still
doesn't list a time frame for an exit strategry (from the incubation stage)
- still TBD.   Any update/plan for that?
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/pluto.html

I believe WSRP4J, which relies on Pluto, is itself working towards existing
incubation (under the mentoring and watchful eye of Davanum, the Apache
co-mentor of wsrp4j's incubation) - what's Pluto's plan?

..Mike




-----Original Message-----
From: Carsten Ziegeler [mailto:cziegeler@s-und-n.de]
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 10:28 AM
To: pluto-dev@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: RE: Mavenizing the build


This is not an excuse but just my point of view currently. I'm
trying to find out how the whole project works. Currently we
have a half working maven build and I think we should first have
a good buildable project before we release something.
Otherwise millions of downloaders will be not so pleased. I know
from experience, that once you offer a downloadable version,
it should be very easy for the users to build and use them.

Of course, if we bad links we should fix them now.


PS: Could you please send plain text mails next time? Thanks!

Carsten

-----Original Message-----
From: IdRatherBeSailing [mailto:barcagrande2003@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 4:05 PM
To: pluto-dev@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: RE: Mavenizing the build


Not to pick on Scott or Carsten, this just happened to be a message I picked
off the archive to reply to...
It seems that all the focus is on long term forward-looking work on Pluto,
which is a good thing in many ways, but shouldn't there be a concentrated
focus on getting a released (incubator release I presume) 1.0 version out
there that the world can play with, without having to know how to grab
everything out of CVS?  The download link on the project page still points
people off on a wild goose chase.
>From the Pluto homepage:  "Pluto is the Reference Implementation of the Java
Portlet Specfication."
As THE reference implementation, of a spec released months ago now, it seems
that there should be a high priority focus on making sure it's easy to get
the reference implementation to start building and testing JSR168 portlets
against, so that the world will be ready to try those portlets against the
various vendors portlet containers when they become available, and so that
they'll know when to go back to their vendors and complain when a portlet
works with Pluto but not with particular vendors' containers.
Where is the 1.0 release?  It builds fine with ant today - how about
freezing a release of that (labelled incubated if necessary) and putting
that out for download before moving on to mavenized builds?