Thanks David, this is a tough, but necessary, conversation.
I snipped A and B because I don't consider them fruitful options at
all.
C) Try to upgrade to Cocoon-3 version.
I don't know whether Cocoon-3 is ready or
possible for Forrest. Would someone else comment.
Cocoon-3 seems ready from what I can tell, though it is already
suffering from the same things that drove me away from enjoying
regular Cocoon. It's overly complex. There was a time when the
return on the steep Cocoon learning curve was worth it but that time,
for me, has passed. I now have minimum amount of spare time to hack
at Forrest and when I've tried lately, it's no longer a pleasure
primarily because I spend much of that time re-learning Cocoon
complexity instead of being productive. I must admit that when I was
at the height of my Cocoon knowledge I was unempathetic to Ross'
pleas, but now, I probably couldn't agree with his sentiments more.
Anyway, I think this is a long way of saying that i honestly don't see
there being a future in a Cocoon-based Forrest.
D) Develop some other core.
See past discussion in our dev mail archives.
I think it's ultimately going to be this or the Attic. Implementing
something that's intuitive, prefers convention, and doesn't attempt to
solve all problems could very well bring the fun back. I think we'd
have a much easier time attracting new devs too since we wouldn't have
the problem of "yeah, forrest is easy to understand.... *after* you
understand this other ridiculously complex beast over there".
E) Cease Forrest and move to the Apache Attic.
http://attic.apache.org/
I think there is a niche out there for Forrest. I've got a need now,
for example, for a simple documentation site but, unfortunately,
forrest is too much of a burden to use for it - documentation is a
side-show that people don't want to have to spend hours/days "coming
up to speed". So I sincerely hope this option isn't where we end up.
---oOo---
Whatever happens, we still need to make a release.
Agreed, I've been poking around at JIRA lately seeing what I can
tackle - as i mentioned the Cocoon (re)-learning curve has kept me
pretty unproductive though.
Whatever happens, more people need to assist with
the project management tasks.
Agreed, since I haven't contributed much lately to the coding, I
haven't been compelled to contribute at all. That's not good, I know.
---oOo---
My opinion is that Forrest needs to make a decision
about which direction, and stick with it, developers
get involved to start Forrest moving again, and build
the community.
Options A to D have previous discussion in the
dev mail archives.
Again, I think D or E are the only viable long-term options.
--tim
