On Jan 27, 2011, at 11:50 AM, Scott Gray wrote:
> (With so many messages I don't have a good spot to say my short piece so
here will do)
>
> IMO our problems will only increase with the size of the code base.
Every time a new feature is committed you have an additional potential
audience that must be kept happy and our ability to please everybody
continues to decrease. Unhappy people don't work well together so things
just keep getting worse.
>
> Solution? Decrease the size of the code base and included features and
increase the ability for the community to share contributions outside of the
ASF's repo. Decrease the load on the committers and let the rest of the
community put their money where their mouth is.
> Some ideas (feasible or not):
> - Pull out all of the themes except one and move each one to google code
or wherever if there is someone interested in looking after each one.
> - Then do the same for the bulk of the special purpose apps.
> - Separate the framework from the applications.
> - Remove any framework features that aren't used by the applications or
are of relatively low value and allow them to be dropped in by users when
they need them.
> - Perhaps even take another look at the possibility of reducing the
dependencies among the core apps and splitting them (I'd gladly welcome 100
new committers to the humanres app because I have no interest in it).
> - Turn the payment and shipping gateway implementations into drop in
components along with any other pieces of code that are suitable for
extraction
> - Investigate ways to allow plug-in modification of apps and implement
something (anything) that allows it.
>
+1 on all points; the next step in the life of the project will be the
setup of an healthy ecosystem and these are concrete steps in that
direction.
Jacopo
> Right now we have a gigantic project with a gateway of ~13 active
committers (23 total) who have day jobs to worry about along with reviewing
(and fighting about) commits (or just giving up on this responsibility),
attempting to improve the project and taking part in these (mostly pointless
discussions) and then keeping the rest of the community happy. Increasing
the number of committers just increases the potential for disagreement and
then stagnation so the only other option to reduce the code.
>
> Give control of features and components to people who care about them and
then help users find them externally as they need them. Don't like the
direction a feature/component is taking? Fork it and compete.
>
> Regards
> Scott
>
> On 27/01/2011, at 9:54 PM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
>
>> I have noticed some negative trends happening to us in the last (1-2)
years:
>> * a dramatic decrease of design discussions and an increase in commits
>> * committers are often working for themselves and not for the greater
good of the project ("if a customer pays me to do something then it will be
also good for the project")
>> * less peer reviews and mostly focused on formal aspects rather then
fundamental aspects of the contributions
>> * a decrease in the minimum quality level needed to make a commit
"acceptable"
>> * a proliferation of "best practices" and "rules" in an attempt to
improve the quality of the commits
>> * a decay in the attitude and quality of discussions: attacks, critics
and fights instead of healthy discussions to learn from others and improve
design decisions
>>
>> Of course I am focusing on bad things, to the good ones (yes, there are
also good ones) it is easier to adjust: however when the final result of our
efforts is that a person like David doesn't feel comfortable in contributing
more then I feel bad.
>> The primary goal of the PMC, and the community in general, should be
that of creating the perfect environment to facilitate contributions from
people like David, and limit/review/improve the contributions from other
less blessed contributors: it seems like all our efforts are obtaining the
exact opposite result.
>>
>> Jacopo
>>
>> On Jan 27, 2011, at 7:46 AM, David E Jones wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I'll respond here to Adrian's comments below, and to what Raj and
others have written as well.
>>>
>>> Backwards compatibility is a huge issue, but I suppose that is as much
a symptom as it is a disease in and of itself. The underlying issue is
bureaucracy.
>>>
>>> If I wanted to spend all my time chatting with others and writing
endlessly about when to do things and what to do, and trying to recruit
others to do it... then OFBiz would be the perfect place for that. I did
that for years, and I'm happy with what has been done with OFBiz, but there
came a point in time where the whole bureaucratic trend became stronger than
any single person's ability to push for new or different things. That point
in time was at least a yeah and a half ago, and perhaps long earlier than
that depending on how you look at it.
>>>
>>> Personally, I'd rather spend my time on more productive efforts, and do
so in a way that avoids this same bureaucratic mess in the future (like
different management style and keeping framework, data model, themes, and
applications as separate projects). This way not only I, but many people are
free to work on what they want to and not have to argue about every little
thing they want to do, or deal with constant complaints about every little
thing they actually do.
>>>
>>> Isn't separate and competing projects better than that everyone arguing
and having to agree on what to do? Well, I have good news! No matter how you
(the reader) answer that question, you have an option to fit your
preferences.
>>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 25, 2011, at 8:45 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
>>>
>>>> Many of the things listed here have been discussed, and as far as I
can tell, there is no objection to making those changes - we just need the
manpower to do it.
>>>>
>>>> Item #7 has been discussed and there hasn't been any argument against
that change - except that it touches on the backwards-compatibility issue.
And I'm going to use this opportunity to address that issue.
>>>>
>>>> Some of the changes mentioned here wouldn't affect any of my projects
- because I don't attempt to patch or modify the framework - I only build
applications on it. Other changes mentioned here would make application
development easier.
>>>>
>>>> The other day Ryan Foster described the backwards-compatibility talk
as a mantra. I view it as more of a straw man. Five days ago I posed this
question to the user mailing list:
>>>>
>>>> "Would you, as an end user of OFBiz, knowing that the OFBiz project
could be improved greatly - but at the cost of some backward incompatibility
- accept the changes? If yes, how often would backwards-incompatible changes
be acceptable?"
>>>>
>>>> It is interesting to note that in a list of over 400 subscribers, no
one has replied.
>>>>
>>>> The most vocal proponents of backwards-compatibility (in the
framework) are a few players who have modified the framework locally. As a
community, do we really want to allow those few members to stifle
innovation?
>>>>
>>>> Some users claimed the updated Flat Grey visual theme wasn't
"backwards compatible." What does that even mean? Some colors and
background images were changed - how is that backwards incompatible?
>>>>
>>>> To be fair, I have been an advocate for backwards-compatibility. But
that has been for things that break application functionality.
>>>>
>>>> At the least, there needs to be a compromise. At best, there needs to
be acceptance of the possibility of future versions that are not backwards
compatible with previous versions. That concept is not new or revolutionary
- it goes on in every software project, both open source and commercial.
>>>>
>>>> David has some great ideas, but he feels compelled to start over from
scratch to implement them. From my perspective, that's a tragedy. One of the
project's founders feels the need to start another project as a last resort
to make the project he originally started better. Does that make sense?
>>>>
>>>> I don't want to use Moqui. It's an unfinished framework controlled by
one person and it has no applications built around it. Bottom line - it's
not an option. What I want is Moqui's innovations in OFBiz.
>>>>
>>>> I believe it's time we have a serious discussion about this. Users
have commented that there is no plan for OFBiz - what is planned for its
future? They're right. Maybe we should come up with some plans, or some kind
of path to the future.
>>>>
>>>> I propose we put all the cards on the table. Where do we go from here?
Continue on our present path and have competing projects that improve on
OFBiz technology? Try to keep innovation in the project at the expense of
some backwards incompatibility? Maintain backwards compatibility by forking
the project to something new? Or have milestone versions that are clearly
marketed as backwards incompatible with previous milestone versions?
>>>>
>>>> Lately, it seems many of the big players in the OFBiz developer
community have been absent on the mailing list. I understand that this is a
volunteer community, but at the same time, we all have a say, and that "say"
depends on us saying *something.*
>>>>
>>>> So, please say something.
>>>>
>>>> -Adrian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 1/25/2011 1:53 PM, David E Jones wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 25, 2011, at 6:02 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 1/25/11 2:06 AM, David E Jones wrote:
>>>>>>> All of that said, now that Moqui is starting to take shape I find
the OFBiz Framework to be cumbersome and inconsistent in many ways (things
that are hard to fix, but that are not surprising given the pioneering
history of the OFBiz Framework). Those funny quirky things are likely a
turn-off to prospective developers and I'm hoping to remove that impediment
to adopting the approach.
>>>>>> David - you keep saying this..Please provide some examples of
"cumbersome and inconsistent" within the framework. And why not try and fix
these? Instead of reinventing the wheel. What "funny quirky" things have
turned of prospective developers? Do you have an specific examples?
>>>>> Yes, I have mentioned these many times especially in the last 2-3
years. Some of them I have tried to fix in OFBiz itself and ran into rather
large problems. These are not easy changes to make in a large and mature
project like OFBiz, and after trying a few times I decided that a new
framework was the only way forward (another thing I've written before and
made very clear).
>>>>>
>>>>> These are the things that led to many aspects of the design of Moqui,
and the best summary of them is the document I wrote about the differences
between the Moqui and OFBiz frameworks:
>>>>>
>>>>>
http://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/forums/forum/1086127/topic/3597296
>>>>>
>>>>> To sum up here are some of the major inconsistencies and annoyances
in the current OFBiz framework that bug me frequently while I'm developing:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. XML actions are different in each widget and in the
simple-methods; they share some underlying code but there are so many
differences
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. scriptlets and expressions are a messy combination of BeanShell,
UEL, and Groovy and keeping track of which is a pain, plus the Groovy syntax
and capabilities are SO much better than the others so I find myself almost
always using ${groovy:...} instead of the default, and in annoying places
like the form.field.@use-when attribute since it is always BeanShell I
just use a set action to prepare a boolean and then check it in the use-when
(BeanShell is HORRIBLE compared to groovy, especially when squeezed into XML
attributes)
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. the controller.xml file gets HUGE for larger applications, and if
split it becomes harder to find requests and views; *Screen.xml files also
tend to get HUGE with large numbers of screens in them; both are not
organized in the same way as the application, also generally making things
harder to find; views/screens and requests don't define incoming parameters
so when doing request-redirect you have to specify the parameters to use in
a larger number of places
>>>>>
>>>>> 4. another on the topic of why so many files: service groups and
simple-methods are just XML, why not include them inline in the service
definition (especially for smaller services), and encourage fewer services
per file
>>>>>
>>>>> 5. loading of artifacts is not very lazy, meaning lots of unused
screens, forms, services, entities and so on that are not used are loaded
anyway; also many artifacts are difficult to reload by cache clearing and so
that has limited support in OFBiz; this slows things down reloading lots of
stuff in development, and results in more resources used than needed in
production
>>>>>
>>>>> 6. the deployment model of OFBiz is limited and the use of static
fields for initialization makes it difficult to deploy in other ways; there
are few init/destroy methods and object instances that would make more
deployment models easier and more flexible; also because of this it is
difficult to get data from other parts of the framework (for example the
audit log stuff in the OFBiz Entity Engine uses ThreadLocal variables to
pass userLoginId and visitId down since there is no other good way of doing
it); in other words, the tools don't share a context
>>>>>
>>>>> 7. no API for apps; the framework is made up of an enormous number of
classes that follow a bunch of different "patterns" (in quotes because the
use of the term is generous) because of various people "cleaning" things up
over time (also in quotes because the use of the term is generous), and
there is no distinction between the API that apps are intended to use and
the internal implementation of that API; this has the nasty side effect of
making it difficult to find the object and method you want, AND it makes
backward compatibility problems REALLY nasty because it gets people
believing that EVERY SINGLE object needs to ALWAYS be backward compatible...
and that results in more and more piles of trash code lying around over
time, and all of that code and differing patterns makes framework changes
error-prone and unnecessarily difficult (and this is true for some of the
app code in OFBiz too)
>>>>>
>>>>> I should get back to work... there's a short list anyway...
>>>>>
>>>>> The trick is how to solve these without abandoning backward
compatibility, and requiring a refactor of much of the framework and then
based on that the updating of massive numbers of application artifacts...
and that is just the stuff in OFBiz itself... not including everything that
everyone else has written outside the project that they may want to update.
And, ALL of that would have to be retested. Plus, it would take so long to
get all of this done in a branch with huge numbers of changes while others
are making incremental changes in the trunk making it nearly impossible to
merge the branch into the trunk, so it would basically be a fork anyway...
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
