RE: [LONG TERM PLAN] Proposed Architecture for Tomcat.Next Servle t Container

["Saffer, Kevin" <0K...@ldsltd.com>]

	I may be joining the discussion a bit late and what I'm about to say
may have been said.

	re-architecting, refactoring, redesigning, whatever you want to call
it is always a good idea, time permitting.  

	In this case I don't see any time constraints, I have read a lot of
talk about PMC and Timelines, where are they?  This is open source, lets do
whats best for the product, not an individual entity invloved.

	IMHO, there is much to gain from a new architecture, I'm not going
to go into that, we all know the benefits.  Speaking as a tomcat user who
wants to become a developer, the code and code structure is dificult to read
and understand, there is an obvious lack of documentation, code and
otherwise.

	Parallel development of branches or not, Tomcat needs a new
infrastructure.

	Kevin Saffer
	ksaffer@columbus.rr.com


> Hans Bergsten wrote:
> > 
> > "Anil K. Vijendran" wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Hans Bergsten wrote:
> > >
> > > > discussion dealt with a lot of other stuff as well, but I saw at
> least some
> > > > support for parallel development; make sure all cleanup of Tomcat
> 3.x is
> > > > done in line with the Tomcat.next proposal, at the same time work
> from
> > > > scratch with Tomcat.next and refactor in as much as possible from
> both
> > > > Tomcat and JServ.
> > >
> > > What would the point of doing two parallel pieces of work be? As I see
> it,
> > > we either relegate the current branch to bugfix mode and start new
> work by
> > > creating a fresh workspace and pulling in code as necessary, OR keep
> the
> > > current branch, flush out junk and incorporate Craig's ideas in there.
> > >
> > > Doing both would be a waste of resources that we have here. I can see
> some
> > > people moving over to work on the new branch and some others sticking
> with
> > > the older branch. Also keeping two parallel tracks open causes
> confusion
> > > on where we implement the next version of the specifications.
> > >
> > > Either we decide to flush out Tomcat.current or we decide to dump
> > > Tomcat.current, leave it in bugfix mode and move on to Tomcat.next
> which
> > > will pull in code from Tomcat.current as necessary.
> > >
> > > Having said that, my vote would still be to see how the cleanup is
> > > done. Evaluate the possibility of moving over to a fresh branch after
> much
> > > of the "cleanup" on Tomcat.current is done.
> > 
> > I believe I touched on all of this in my reply to Sam. Just a comment
> about
> > resources. I'm brought up in the corporate world, where "brain power" is
> > a resource limited by budgets and the ability to hire more people. I'm
> new
> > to the Open Source world, but I see one of the big advantages being
> pretty
> > much unlimited resources! As long as there's challenging work to be
> done,
> > and people get the feeling they are really contributing, you have a
> world
> > full of developers eager to jump in.
> > 
> > We have already added a number of committers since we started Jakarta,
> and
> > there are other potential committers submitting patches on a daily
> basis.
> > If we make it possible for people to contribute with larger things than
> > pure bug fixes, like brand new features, I'm sure you will find a lot of
> > people joining the project. But as I have mentioned in other mails, it's
> > very hard to do something "big" unless the code base is clean and
> > understandable. So yes, if starting a new branch means the current
> branch
> > gets relegated to bugfix mode, so be it. We don't have to explicitly
> decide
> > that it should be like that; it will take care of itself.
> 
> You fail to consider that forking friction develops in this case and you
> get "unlimited human resources" only when you are the only project in
> town. Otherwise you have "half unlimited resources", or even less than
> that since much more time is spent dealing "my project is better than
> yours" and such (KDE vs. GNOME, for example).
> 
> Open source dynamics are strange beasts.
> 
> -- 
> Stefano Mazzocchi      One must still have chaos in oneself to be
>                           able to give birth to a dancing star.
> <st...@apache.org>                             Friedrich Nietzsche
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