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
