Brian Pontarelli wrote:
>
>
> Hey all. I wanted to drop the developers a few notes regarding my recent
> experience with Struts2. I've been a Struts/WebWork user for quite some
> time and recently attempted a stab at the Struts 2 switch because I'm
> planning on using Struts 2 for building client sites for the company I
> work for. Also, I definitely am trying to be very constructive and if I
> come off badly I do apologize. Okay on to the info:
>
> 1. Arrived at the Struts homepage and Struts 2 almost looked dead. No
> activity since October and no news or release information. Adding some
> news every few weeks will help keep new comers from bailing.
>
> 2. Tried to download the release using the release navigation. Here I
> was presented with the fact that there was a 2.0.1 BETA, which is the
> latest development release. I spent the next while looking for the 2.0.0
> release, figuring that was the last stable release. Couldn't find it
> obviously. The versioning currently looks to the outside to be a
> complete mess and it is very confusing and non standard. I would not
> release a patch version (major.minor.patch) until the major version is
> released. Therefore all the references to 2.0.1 through 2.0.6 are very
> confusing because these are not really final releases, but all BETAs.
> Plus, there is talk about 2.0.1 BETA and 2.0.4 and 2.0.6 and this is all
> quite confusing. I would probably fix the version into a standard alpha,
> beta, release candidate model. So, currently it would be something like
> 2.0.0-RC6 or the like working towards a final release of 2.0.0.
>
> 3. The documentation for Struts 2 contains references to zero
> configuration and the web.xml configuration file also contains this
> stuff. There are also a number of references to all the annotations.
> These are not available in the 2.0.1BETA JAR files and therefore I had a
> hard time using them ;) I did find them in the nightly snapshots, which
> aren't functional. I would keep the documentation inline with the latest
> beta and not the latest nightly snapshot. Anyone who wants bleeding edge
> will be willing to look at the source to see new stuff or build the
> latest snapshot docs themselves.
>
> 4. The tutorials reference a hybrid of WebWork 2 configuration, classes,
> tags and files and Struts2 configuration and files. This would
> definitely be confusing for a newcomer. I would probably keep the
> tutorials using only struts2 configuration, classes, tags and files
> since that is what the latest beta release uses. I would in turn direct
> folks to the WebWork wiki for running WebWork 2 if they don't want to
> use the BETA release.
>
> 5. There is really no getting started document for Struts2. It would be
> a bit of a stumbling block for a newcomer to have various JAR files in
> the distribution without any clue on which to use or what the
> 'struts2-all' jar contains. There should be a true Struts2 getting
> started document that contains a complete step by step to getting an
> application running. This could start with the CRUD made easy tutorial
> for WW2 and make it more complete for Struts2.
>
> 6. From the guide perspective, it is very difficult to figure out how to
> write actions. This information is buried in the Struts Configuration
> Elements guide and in the Action Configuration guide under that. In fact
> many of the top level and nested guides are a bit confusing and don't
> necessarily follow the standard path developers will take when getting
> started as well as when trying new things. The top level components
> should be items will be working on when building an application such as
> AJAX, Actions, Validation, etc. rather than items like "Struts
> Configuration Elements" Under these headings would be the configuration,
> the code, the interfaces, examples, etc. This will be how most folks are
> going to be using Struts2. They'll be creating an action, adding
> validation, handling action results, adding interceptors, etc. There are
> a number of guides that are on the right track.
>
> 7. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to grab the code because the
> link is on the main Struts page. Adding a link to the Struts2 page will
> help a lot.
>
> 8. Running the unit tests from the subversion repository causes out of
> memory errors on my machine using the standard 16M of memory that maven
> defaults to run with. I found that after the tests had run it required
> almost 150M of memory to run the tests. I gave maven 512M, but this was
> a stumbling block. This seems like a rather incorrect behavior for tests
> since after each test there should be very little on the heap. Is there
> a memory leak or some reason very large objects are hanging about?
>
> 9. This is a bit nit picky.... The current code in subversion is broken
> therefore I was unable to run from sources. One of the things I really
> like about many frameworks I've worked with and coded on was the fact
> that a clean checkout was almost guaranteed to compile, test and run.
> This helps a lot for folks that want the bleeding edge and to start
> contributing.
>
> I'll try to keep looking around in source code and grabbing the latest
> code to see how things are progressing. I'm also slated to have a large
> amount of time at work devoted to getting the companies frameworks and
> documentation up to the newest architecture I've created and would be
> willing to help on Struts 2 work whenever possible. I'm particularly
> interested in minimizing ramp up time as well as making application
> development time minimal (zero config kinda stuff).
>
> Thanks,
> Brian Pontarelli
>
Sounds like you need AppFuse!
http://appfuse.org/display/APF/Using+Struts+2
Sorry - I couldn't resist. ;-)
Matt
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