On 23.01.2021 17:06, Rick McGuire wrote: > No answer from me means I'm just tired of having to answer this question over > and over.
Yes, the question comes over and over, because if one does not want ooRexx to die, then it needs to be released! Not in another seven years, but ASAP! ooRexx 5 has been working *much* better than 4.2 for many years by now, it is much more stable! Rather than releasing 5.0 and do incremental releases whenever bugs got fixed or new features got added, 5.0 just hangs out there in beta land for years such that it cannot be deployed in many companies that prohibit beta software in production! Looking at seven years and no release of ooRexx helps anyone more and more who wants Rexx/ooRexx phased out and replaced by Python, Perl, Ruby or other languages in such companies and organisations. > In my opinion, it is not ready for release yet. We still have no checked in > installer solution for > the mac, Well, P.O. has been offering a mac installer for quite some time without anyone picking it up. And he has put an incredible amount of work and effort into it without anyone around this e-mail list to appreciate it, it seems. My own Mac installer for BSF4ooRexx (under the Apache 2.0 license) includes ooRexx because the ooRexx project had neglected to support a Mac installer for too many years for whatever reasones. As far as I understand neither you nor Erich want AL 2.0 sources to go with ooRexx which has made that open-source solution to be out of reach for the ooRexx project. As a result I have applauded P.O.'s initiative and incredible personal efforts and his final achievement for all these years. So a Mac installer has been available, it has been offered to the ooRexx project and could have been picked up for quite some time. > there are a number of unfixed bugs, Yes, like in many software projects, that get released despite of (minor) bugs (I remember more than twenty years ago MS Word being reported to had been released with almost 10,000 known bugs, that were obviously not regarded to be showstoppers). Of course, all reported bugs should be tackled as fast as possilbe and would be a good reason for turning back to yearly bug-fix releases of ooRexx. The question in this context is, are there any showstopper bugs that inhibit ooRexx 5.0 beta to be released? ooRexx 5.0 beta has been in a *much* better shape than the released 4.2 version; or with other words: wouldn't the situation for 4.2 users improve considerably with a release of 5.0 allowing them to replace 4.2 in the field? ooRexx 5.0 would be a *huge* bug-fix release over 4.2 and improves feature-wise seeing all those great new features in 5.0! > the docs really, really need a thorough review and update, This is another item where it is not clear who is supposed to do that review and do the updates. As long as such a person does not come forward it will not happen. Does this qualify not releasing code that works, irrespective whether the documentation documents all of its features and correctly so? As you know last year an initiative by Gil, P.O. and myself put a *lot* of work in making the ooRexx documentation to be producible again in a reliable manner, and on all major operating systems. This was an incredibly important achievement as a project that could not produce its own documentation anymore could only be regarded to be quite doomed. Yet, this important work and its achievements have not been appreciated in this list! However, it has been put in use now for updating the ooRexx 5.0 documentation every time it gets changed, which is good, so the work has been proofing valuable. [If one looks at <https://www.oorexx.org/docs/> one can get at HTML and PDF renderings of the ooRexx documentation. However, it is for ooRexx 4.0 as of August 2009! Replacing that outdated version is another todo-item, but not a showstopper one! BTW, should ooRexx 5.0 be released anytime soon, I would be interested in the creation of ePub books from the current documentation, as that would be another supportive boon for ooRexx IMHO!] > and there are still incomplete doc/test items on some fixed bugs and features. Well, these could probably be fixed quite quickly, if the help of the community is requested *and* appreciated! Another question in this context: how to detect, find out where there are incomplete doc and test items? Are missing doc/test items really showstopper items for a release? [If so, then no version of ooRexx could have been released in the past (and e.g. easter eggs impossible)!] > > PS, if you're looking for me to be the one to do all of the above, it's > probably not going to > happen. ` Oh, I am not looking for you to do all the things, no one does. This should be a community effort, but this mandates that communication in a friendly and constructive manner takes place and work of others gets appreciated. Though I would be looking/hoping for you for fixing bugs, as you are the original creator, with the most insight, an incredible talented and knowledgeable person in many fields, so yes, I would hope you would be as constructive as possible for the benefit of this project! [I have been appreciating all of your (and also Erich's!) great work in that respect and also in implementing new, helpful and important features into the language!] What you have achieved with ooRexx is really great and I can see in a lab environment every semester how easy it is for my (business administration) students to learn programming from 0 to 100 in one semester. With ooRexx it has become possible to teach the fundamentals of object-oriented programming, apply the knowledge to Windows and Windows applications like MS Office by the middle of the semester, and to teach them GUI-programming, socket-programming, programming OpenOffice/LibreOffice, processing XML marked-up text-files, JavaFX all with ooRexx teaming it up with BSF4ooRexx by the end of the semester! Given the appropriate infrastructure, these students now have become even able to create webserver applications with ooRexx within a few hours, their problem solving potential is enormous due to it. (Currently I read a Bachelor thesis of a student who has just finished to implement a web shop with cart and e-mail, deployed via a Java based webserver and implemented with ooRexx!) There is no other programming language I know of (and I have experimented with a few in the past before settling on Object REXX/ooRexx realizing its supremacy :) over the other programming languages) which could be used to teach all of these fundamental knowledge in a single semester! So I really have been appreciating all of your (great!) work on ooRexx, but have been seeing a more and more urgent need to get a release of ooRexx 5.0 out the door ASAP (to hinder it to fall to oblivion by losing existing installations and inhibiting new deployments because it being dubbed "beta" instead of "release")! ---rony > > On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 10:33 AM Rony G. Flatscher <rony.flatsc...@wu.ac.at > <mailto:rony.flatsc...@wu.ac.at>> wrote: > > As so far there has been no feedback whatsoever by Erich or Rick, does > that mean that there is a > silent consent to release the current beta version of ooRexx 5.0 by the > end of February 2021? > > If so, should we create a release candidate (RC) for all supported > platforms and communicate it to > allow developers and users to test it ASAP? Or do we take the fact that > for the past months > and past > years there has been plenty of time to check out and test ooRexx 5.0 beta > and that we have > therefore > everything relevant to know about it in our track system? > > Should there be no showstopper-errors found, let us say within the next > fourteen days, then > prepare > the general availability (GA) release to be announced and distributed by > the end of February by > RexxLA from a (to be created) main/releases/5.0.0 in svn. > > Would that be acceptable for everyone? > > ---rony > > P.S.: Taking no answers as silent consent! > :) > > > On 11.01.2021 17:14, Rony G. Flatscher wrote: > > On February 24th 2021, it will be seven (!) years since the last > official release of ooRexx took > > place, believe it or not! > > > > People who do not follow this list or the ooRexx code updates on > Sourceforge will think, that > > maintenance, let alone development, of ooRexx has ceased seven years > ago! :( > > > > This puts pressure on those people in organisations/businesses who use > Rexx/ooRexx but are faced > > with demands of replacements with more modern, maintained and > continuously developed programming > > languages like Python, Ruby and the like. > > > > Also, people who suggest to allow usage of ooRexx in > organisations/businesses will usually get > > turned down as ooRexx is outdated and not maintained, so why using it? > Learning about a beta > version > > does not help as everyone knows that beta means error-prone, unstable > software and the like, > and as > > a result organisations/businesses usually prohibit usage and deployment > of beta software. > > > > As ooRexx 5.0 beta has been in an excellent condition for many years, > it could have been > released > > years ago! ooRexx 5.0 beta adds a wealth of great new features, in > addition very notable speed > > improvements and fixes many bugs of the seven years old ooRexx 4.2, the > last official release of > > ooRexx! > > > > As no show-stoppers are present I think that the current version of > ooRexx 5.0 beta should be > > released ASAP as is. The only thing needed would be a new package that > is declared to be the > release > > package! > > > > Is there a will for a release? If so, can the release be done by > February 24th 2021? > > > > ---rony > > > > P.S.: Also, once a release is done, I would suggest to make sure to > create a yearly (!) release, > > even if they are only microreleases! This will signal ongoing > maintenance and development to > > outsiders/users of ooRexx, which has been the case for all those past > years (but lacking > releases > > this was not communicated successfully to outsiders/users of ooRexx). > > > > P.P.S.: In today's world the release cycles are critical to public > reception of the > healthiness of > > (software) projects it seems, probably the main reason why Linux > creates even twice a year a > > release, but also Java/OpenJDK and others. > > >
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