On 6 September 2016 at 12:18, Ian Dunlop <[email protected]> wrote:

> Need some guidance on a some of the things in

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TAVERNADEV/2016-03+Taverna+Graduation+Maturity+Assessment

Yes, I think it's good we do ask abut the assessment questions bit by
bit like this - Shoaib asked me similar things in the office. I guess
we could end up with quite a few emails though.. but that's probably
good for the record!


> eg
> RE10: Releases consist of source code, distributed using standard and open
> archive formats that are expected to stay readable in the long term. [6]
> Apache Taverna is based on open source, community maintained languages
> (list needed - Java, Android).
>
> Anyone done a count of all the languages?

I'll have a go..

Java (including Android), Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Bash


There's some older Ruby and Python stuff hanging around at
https://github.com/mygrid which we didn't move to Apache.


But I think RE10 talks about the form and distribution of the release
archives - not which language it uses.


So I guess the real answer is more something like

Releases at https://archive.apache.org/dist/incubator/taverna/source/
are replicated to the
standard Apache mirrors -
https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/incubator/taverna/source/ -
archived as regular ZIP files.

Not sure if ZIP is a 'standard and open' format as it's really a
commercial format. However I don't think we would be required to also
provide tar.gz - but that justification is used by some Apache
projects to do dual formats.

*Edit*: Yes it is..
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=60101
- https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT

(Also they are presumably valid JAR files - so any Java installation
should be able to unpack them with "jar x")


> QU40: The project puts a high priority on backwards compatibility and aims
> to document any incompatible changes and provide tools and documentation to
> help users transition to new features.
> Apache Taverna ...
>
> Backwards compatibility of what?

Uh.. Yes I guess we have many challenges here.

User-wise we can say that we provide backward compatibility by opening
legacy Taverna 2 workflows as part of Taverna Language. The SCUFL2
workflow format also has features to support backwards compatibility,
e.g. JSON schemas for activity configurations.


Developer-wise we can say we use API/impl splits, semantic versioning
http://semver.org/ and OSGi - we also provide developer upgrade
documentation such as
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TAVERNADEV/Tutorial%3A+Move+a+plugin+from+Taverna+2+to+Taverna+3

I guess providing good change logs is also important - we only have
two releases of the same component since moving to ASF - with Taverna
Language 0.15.0 and 0.15.1, where we included a change log:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?version=12333250&projectId=12318322



-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718

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