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List:       velocity-dev
Subject:    Re: Spent time working on Velocity
From:       Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu.dumitriu () gmail ! com>
Date:       2014-09-26 16:22:35
Message-ID: 542592CB.5030303 () gmail ! com
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On 09/25/2014 11:27 PM, Nathan Bubna wrote:
> https://github.com/apache/velocity-engine
> 
> https://github.com/apache/velocity-engine/tree/2.0_Exp
> 
> Now, that said, i've not used the git mirror. The Subversion repository may
> still be considered the primary one by the infrastructure guys, but i
> assume they work together well enough.

AFAIK, subversion is the only place where commits happen, the GitHub
repos are read-only mirrors, but they're good for getting contributions
in. Committers have to get the GitHub patches and push them to the
Apache SVN repo.

> As far as Anakia/Texen, i'm not sure anyone still uses those. Don't bother
> with them, for now.
> 
> If slf4j works better for Android, that seems like a fine log adaptor to me.

+1 for slf4j, it's a generic enough abstraction of logging frameworks,
so LogChute is really not needed.

> Here's the CLA: http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt
> 
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Frederick N. Brier <fnbrier@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Nathan,
>>
>> I looked for the Velocity Git repo and could not find it on the Apache Git
>> page.  I just started with the 1.7 source code and initialized my own git
>> repo and was making changes there.  If you can post the git URL, I could
>> clone it and try and meld my changes on to a branch and push the repo to
>> Github so everyone could see it and evaluate it.
>>
>> While I am not familiar with Anakia/Texen, my thought was that if others
>> were interested, the single module Maven project would become a
>> multi-module project with at least 3 child modules: velocity-core,
>> velocity-anakia, and velocity-texen.

I would recommend working on top of the 2.0 branch, it already has a
good starting point for a module-based Maven build. Anakia and Texen
have already been moved out of the engine (their repos are not mirrored
on GitHub).

>> I didn't start my current project using Velocity.  My background is more
>> enterprise systems and not Android.  So I started writing an XML schema to
>> represent my domain objects and started bumping my head on a number of
>> Android limitations, specific to XML.  BTW, Android development tools rock,
>> but I quickly found out that I couldn't use JAXB, Thymeleaf, or XMLBeans <
>> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=76265>.  There are
>> several options out there for template engines, but all the ones that would
>> work on Android seemed very limited.  As mentioned, I'd used Velocity
>> several times, years ago.  So I figured I'd give it a whirl.
>>
>> Log4j can apparently work on Android, but enough posts were out there that
>> made me nervous.  Having already experienced problems with libraries, I
>> decided to pare down Velocity to its minimum. That is the reason for
>> trimming out the LogChute, Commons-Logging, Log4J, etc.  It's amazing how
>> much code could be eliminated.  With IoC, the tests might even get leaner.
>> SLF4J <http://www.slf4j.org/> is a real thin facade for logging and there
>> are adapters to all the other logging frameworks.  It is lightweight and
>> there is an slf4j-android <http://www.slf4j.org/android/> project.

What are your plans for IoC? Will you be using JSR-299? Any framework in
mind?

>> I was not even aware of a 2.x branch, what its goals are, or what has been
>> done.  I can sign a CLA.  Could you please post me the git repo that has
>> the 2.x code?  BTW, my middle name is Nathan :).
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
>> On 09/25/2014 05:49 PM, Nathan Bubna wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Frederick!
>>>
>>> Thanks for posting this here. Currently, we have a 1.x branch that is
>>> stable and in a long-term maintenance mode and a 2.x branch that is not
>>> really ready for consumption yet. To be honest, it's been so long since i
>>> worked on 2.x that i can't remember what changes we did get done (i could
>>> go look).  Most of the core committers are, for one reason or another,
>>> focusing their development energies elsewhere, with little intention to
>>> get
>>> back into it. That said, we do still actively oversee the project and are
>>> more than willing to help mentor any newcomers in navigating the ASF
>>> processes for contributing and working on new releases.
>>>
>>> It sounds to me like the work you have done thus far is largely
>>> non-compatible with the 1.x branch. In particular, the removal of
>>> Texen/Anakia and LogChute. I'm not especially familiar with SLF4J, so i
>>> would love to hear your reasons for yanking the LogChute adaptor instead
>>> of
>>> just providing an SLF4J bridge for it. That said, if you are interested in
>>> jumping in on a 2.x branch, i would help you regardless of your decisions.
>>> People around here may have opinions on changes, but the "apache way" is
>>> that those who do the work should make the decisions. :)
>>>
>>> So, yes, we are interested in your work! Do you have it public anywhere we
>>> can look at it? Are you working on a fork of our git mirror? Or did you
>>> check it out of the subversion repo? The next question is whether you are
>>> interested in working through Apache's contribution/committer process.  If
>>> so, you should take a look at the 2.x branch and consider putting a CLA
>>> (contributor's license agreement) on file with the ASF secretary, as that
>>> is needed for both large contributions and new committers (which you would
>>> hopefully become).
>>>
>>> -nathan
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 5:20 PM, Frederick N. Brier <fnbrier@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Dear Velocity Team Members,
>>>>
>>>> I was looking for a template engine that would work on Android, and had
>>>> used Velocity a couple of times, years ago.  The latest version is 1.7.
>>>> There haven't been any code changes in 4 years, although there were some
>>>> recent bug reports.  Log4j has some issues on Android and I shifted to
>>>> Maven from Ant back in its 2.x days.  So I restructured the codebase to
>>>> use
>>>> Maven, moved the Texen and Anakia code to the side, stripped out the
>>>> custom
>>>> LogChute code and changed it to use SLF4J.  There are some minor problems
>>>> just getting the 1.7 source distribution to build.  I found a number of
>>>> bugs along the way and a number of the unit tests were not even being run
>>>> by the Ant build.  I managed to get all but one of the unit tests to work
>>>> (UberSpect related) that had been working before, and several that were
>>>> not, are now.  Several unit tests depended on the LogChute architecture,
>>>> which with great difficulty, I changed.  Having unit tests depend on
>>>> logging feels like a hack, is very fragile, and difficult to understand
>>>> because it isn't clear where the logging statement is being executed.  It
>>>> would be much better to restructure the code to use the more contemporary
>>>> IoC design patterns, so mock objects could be injected.  Injecting the
>>>> MockIntrospectorCacheImpl was painful.  Another unit test motivated me to
>>>> add an initial implementation of an EventListener for the Velocity
>>>> engine.
>>>>
>>>> The rewritten library works under Android, but would still need a lot of
>>>> love before I'd be call it ready for a new release.  What are Apache and
>>>> the Velocity team's plans for the project?  Velocity is the template
>>>> engine
>>>> used by Maven's Site component, so the project is still needed. My
>>>> priorities are to deliver my Android application, but if Apache is
>>>> interested, I could keep working and polishing it.  Thank you for your
>>>> time.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely yours,
>>>> Frederick N. Brier
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
> 


-- 
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu

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