I will incorporate this feedback into the quarterly report. I also heard out-of-band from others suggesting the final paragraph (about community and XML challenges) should be revised or omitted as TMI and too pessimistic, so I'm going to drop that also.
On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 5:27 PM Hitesh Dalsania <[email protected]> wrote: > Mike, > > Most of what you got for VS Code Extension is still valid but more > relevant update to include in quarterly report is below, > > The Daffodil VSCode Extension 1.4.1 was released on 2025-06-30. The > current project activity includes better overall error handling, improved > reliability of Data Editor, Optimize and enhance the DFDL Schema syntax and > semantic support tools (e.g., Intellisense) to support Namespace-aware > element suggestions, several bug-fixes and enhancements to TDML > functionality. > > Thanks, > > Hitesh > > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Beckerle <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2025 11:40 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [DISCUSS] Draft of Quarterly (Sept) Daffodil Board Report > > Due on Sept 8 for board meeting on Sept 10. > > For comments/additions. I'll fix all the long lines and such later so > ignore the formatting. > VSCode folks please make sure this reflects your current status/objectives. > > I do want people to consider the tone here. > I don't want to over state things here, but something like 1/2 our > developer bandwidth on the Daffodil library was used up by this for the > last 6 to 8 months on the Scala version ports, and to me this has added > very little value for our users and I fear until we add some substantial > direct value (like a big performance boost over 3.11.0) it will be hard to > get anyone to upgrade to 4.0.0. > > --------- > > ## Description: > The mission of Apache Daffodil is the creation and maintenance of software > related to an implementation of the Data Format Description Language (DFDL) > used to convert between fixed format data and more readily processed forms > such as XML or JSON > > ## Project Status: > Current project status: Ongoing. Moderate activity. > Issues for the board: None. > > ## Membership Data: > Apache Daffodil was founded 2021-02-16 (4 years ago) There are currently > 19 committers and 18 PMC members in this project. > The Committer-to-PMC ratio is roughly 1:1. > > Community changes, past quarter: > - No new PMC members. Last addition was Peter Katlic on 2024-03-17. > - No new committers. Last addition was Peter Katlic on 2024-03-17. > > ## Project Activity: > > The past 6 to 8 months, the project has mostly been dealing with the > evolution of our underlying Scala platform. Porting from Scala 2.12 to > Scala 2.13 was quite challenging, as much of the Scala built-in XML support > that we were strongly dependent on, was removed in Scala 2.13. The > subsequent port to Scala > 3 required significant changes that will impact all API-level Daffodil > users. > > Daffodil 3.11.0 was released on 2025-06-17 along with the matching > Daffodil SBT plugin 1.4.0 and Daffodil NiFi 1.21. This is the last release > using Scala 2 technology, specifically the LTS Scala 2.13 version. If > necessary we can support this longer term as needed for Daffodil library > users who have fielded products using our Scala 2 code base who are unable > to upgrade (more on this below) to the forthcoming Daffodil 4.0.0 any time > soon. > > The Daffodil VSCode Extension 1.4.1 was released on 2025-06-30 and > includes better overall error handling, improved reliability of Data > Editor, correcting several schema completion usability issues and creating > new-user onboarding and new developer onboarding documentation. > > Daffodil 4.0.0 is in preparation but imminent. This major release uses > Scala 3 technology, and includes an entirely new and improved API > necessitated by Scala-Java interoperability changes in Scala 3. The > Daffodil API no longer has a Java/Scala dual API. It is defined entirely in > Java. In addition to this major API discontinuity, we have chosen to fix > issues that would also require a major version change - some > non-conformities to the DFDL specification are fixed, for example. > Daffodil 4.0.0 is clearly better than the prior versions and the API is > more supportable, but the vast bulk of the required changes added no value > for our users, who may wait for more value-add in subsequent releases > before going through the upgrade and testing pain. > > ## Community Health: > > Good activity level in developer email and commit activity. > > User list activity has dropped, and this is problematic, as is activity of > the related DFDL Workgroup at the Open Grid Forum/ISO. > > Our current user community is defense cyber-security and that world is > happy using XML technology as a basis. But broader dev communities no > longer use XML and there seem to be long term risks to use of XML > technologies extending beyond just Daffodil. The DFDL schema language is > based on XML Schema, and this is a sufficient barrier for adoption by > developers. This is not new news as we have known about this since the time > we were an incubator project. But this remains a challenge for us in that > current XML-oriented users want performance improvements, bug fixes, and > long-term supportability (e.g., Scala 3) and this easily uses up the > development capabilities of our whole dev community, yet a reinvention of > the technology independent of XML Schema is necessary to attract a more > diverse community of developers in the long term. Our project roadmap > already reflects these needs and we need to make progress on it. >
