release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX -- Olindo Pindaro http://www.linkedin.com/in/olindopindaro +39 3939455830
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Please search the mail achieves. Recently a discussion was going on for this topic. You will get all your questions sorted out. Thanks! -- Vivek Mishra Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBIZ/Main+New+Features Jacques From: Olindo Pindaro o.pind...@gmail.com What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX -- Olindo Pindaro http://www.linkedin.com/in/olindopindaro +39 3939455830
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
-1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi Ashish: You are correct - but it does get confusing after a while - trunk vs. releases vs. whateverAnyhow, I meant to say: 4.x Release. And I stand by that, especially if you want to evaluate ecommerce features. As for reporting bugs, I beg to differ. Bug reporting is not for the beginner (or the faint of heart :-) Just my 2 cents. Ruth Ashish Vijaywargiya wrote: -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are coming from. But I think you need to consider that for new users (and this is only for new users), they should be guided towards using a stable, proven release. The 4.x release is the only release that is proven and works out-of-the-box as advertised. Your reference to beginner documentation aside (and, BTW, this is developer documentation not end-user documentation), I can't in good conscience suggest to anyone to use code that hasn't been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. Just my 2 cents. Ruth Jacques Le Roux wrote: I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
The received informations are all very useful. Thanks to all 2009/9/24 Ruth Hoffman rhoff...@aesolves.com Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX -- Olindo Pindaro http://www.linkedin.com/in/olindopindaro +39 3939455830
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For reasons we've discussed before in many cases the trunk is actually more bug-free than any release branch as long as you stay updated with it, of course with the release branches you have to stay updated with them too if you want bug fixes (ie that is the patching process for them and it's BAD BAD BAD to not update when using the release branches). That said, the basic idea behind the releases and what to choose still holds pretty true, and the release branches are definitely more stable (meaning they don't change, not meaning more bug-free, but it does help some with that), see the How Do I Decide What To Use section here: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:49 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are coming from. But I think you need to consider that for new users (and this is only for new users), they should be guided towards using a stable, proven release. The 4.x release is the only release that is proven and works out-of-the-box as advertised. Your reference to beginner documentation aside (and, BTW, this is developer documentation not end-user documentation), I can't in good conscience suggest to anyone to use code that hasn't been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. Just my 2 cents. Ruth Jacques Le Roux wrote: I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE ) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
I agree with most of what David said. I disagree that the trunk is more bug free than a release. There have been many times where a trunk revision won't even compile. At least a release has a better chance of compiling. Not too long ago, I upgraded our production server to the trunk and I ended up having to fix a dozen or so regressions in the Work Effort application - regressions that don't exist in the 9.04 release. So, if you choose to use the trunk, you have to time your checkout very carefully. You have to be sure to check out a revision that hasn't introduced new bugs. For someone who doesn't have the time to monitor the trunk closely, the release is the best choice. -Adrian David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For reasons we've discussed before in many cases the trunk is actually more bug-free than any release branch as long as you stay updated with it, of course with the release branches you have to stay updated with them too if you want bug fixes (ie that is the patching process for them and it's BAD BAD BAD to not update when using the release branches). That said, the basic idea behind the releases and what to choose still holds pretty true, and the release branches are definitely more stable (meaning they don't change, not meaning more bug-free, but it does help some with that), see the How Do I Decide What To Use section here: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:49 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are coming from. But I think you need to consider that for new users (and this is only for new users), they should be guided towards using a stable, proven release. The 4.x release is the only release that is proven and works out-of-the-box as advertised. Your reference to beginner documentation aside (and, BTW, this is developer documentation not end-user documentation), I can't in good conscience suggest to anyone to use code that hasn't been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. Just my 2 cents. Ruth Jacques Le Roux wrote: I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. Actually, the devil is in the details. I'm not dissing 50 man-years of work, but how many years of work went into the code base prior to the 9.x release? And how many implementations are there of 4.x code vs. trunk releases since the branch? This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. That is good to know. Sounds like OFBiz is moving in the right direction. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For reasons we've discussed before in many cases the trunk is actually more bug-free than any release branch as long as you stay updated with it, of course with the release branches you have to stay updated with them too if you want bug fixes (ie that is the patching process for them and it's BAD BAD BAD to not update when using the release branches). I guess this is where we differ. I'd say a new user - out to kick the tires - is not interested in updating or reporting bugs. They just want to get started with a minimum of frustration and a maximum of success. That said, the basic idea behind the releases and what to choose still holds pretty true, and the release branches are definitely more stable (meaning they don't change, not meaning more bug-free, but it does help some with that), see the How Do I Decide What To Use section here: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:49 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi Ruth, Actually my main argument was the help of the community. But on the other hand, it's true that you need less help with R4.0 because it's more stable (Minerva issue aside) Jacques From: Ruth Hoffman rhoff...@aesolves.com Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are coming from. But I think you need to consider that for new users (and this is only for new users), they should be guided towards using a stable, proven release. The 4.x release is the only release that is proven and works out-of-the-box as advertised. Your reference to beginner documentation aside (and, BTW, this is developer documentation not end-user documentation), I can't in good conscience suggest to anyone to use code that hasn't been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. Just my 2 cents. Ruth Jacques Le Roux wrote: I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd. http://www.hotwaxmedia.com Helping hand around the World ... USA | Italy | India | New Zealand Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hello Olindo: IMHO - and not to ruffle any feathers - there are a number of minor but very visible bugs (mostly in the presentation layer) in the 9.04 release that could easily discourage and frustrate a first time user. I found this out the hard way while trying to use the 9.04 release as a basis for screen shots in my 2 books (and for the myofbiz.com website.) My advice for what it is worth: if you are a beginner, start with the 4.x trunk release (it's rock solid and proven) and then, when you understand how OFBiz should work, move on to 9.04 if needed. Again, Just my 2 cents. Ruth Olindo Pindaro wrote: What is the difference beetween this 2 branches? TNX
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi Adrian: Thanks for your comments. Your email exemplifies exactly what I've been trying to say: There is way too much confusion and conflicting guidance about what a new user should do. If I step back for a minute and put myself in an OFBiz novice's shoes and then answer the question again...well maybe you can see where I'm coming from. Anyhow, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment. Regards, Ruth Adrian Crum wrote: I agree with most of what David said. I disagree that the trunk is more bug free than a release. There have been many times where a trunk revision won't even compile. At least a release has a better chance of compiling. Not too long ago, I upgraded our production server to the trunk and I ended up having to fix a dozen or so regressions in the Work Effort application - regressions that don't exist in the 9.04 release. So, if you choose to use the trunk, you have to time your checkout very carefully. You have to be sure to check out a revision that hasn't introduced new bugs. For someone who doesn't have the time to monitor the trunk closely, the release is the best choice. -Adrian David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For reasons we've discussed before in many cases the trunk is actually more bug-free than any release branch as long as you stay updated with it, of course with the release branches you have to stay updated with them too if you want bug fixes (ie that is the patching process for them and it's BAD BAD BAD to not update when using the release branches). That said, the basic idea behind the releases and what to choose still holds pretty true, and the release branches are definitely more stable (meaning they don't change, not meaning more bug-free, but it does help some with that), see the How Do I Decide What To Use section here: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:49 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi Jacques: I understand and respect where both of you are coming from. But I think you need to consider that for new users (and this is only for new users), they should be guided towards using a stable, proven release. The 4.x release is the only release that is proven and works out-of-the-box as advertised. Your reference to beginner documentation aside (and, BTW, this is developer documentation not end-user documentation), I can't in good conscience suggest to anyone to use code that hasn't been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. Just my 2 cents. Ruth Jacques Le Roux wrote: I totally agree with Ashish (not surprising) but Ruth is also right to say that we have still some bugs in R9.04, but it's improving day after day and have a lot more features and a better architecture. For instance there is still issues with Minerva in R4. And IMO, the main reason is you will not get much help (if any) from the community with R4. We are almost all turned to the future, not the past... Jacques From: Ashish Vijaywargiya ashish.vijaywarg...@hotwaxmedia.com -1 for starting with OFBiz 4.0 release. Instead of this I will recommend to start with either Release branch 9.04 or trunk and report any bug found. The main reason of my recommendation is that the beginner document(http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/UBE) and some other document best support to Release Branch 9.04 trunk. PS: 4.x trunk release - Ruth, If I am not wrong trunk word is used for the repository on which current development is going on. -- Regards Ashish Vijaywargiya HotWax Media Pvt. Ltd.
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. Actually, the devil is in the details. I'm not dissing 50 man- years of work, but how many years of work went into the code base prior to the 9.x release? And how many implementations are there of 4.x code vs. trunk releases since the branch? This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. That is good to know. Sounds like OFBiz is moving in the right direction. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For reasons we've discussed before in many cases the trunk is actually more bug-free than any release branch as long as you stay updated with it, of
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Being a test-first, test-driven community would still be the best way to avoid that. Until we take a stance and reject everything that doesn't do this, then I guess I'd have to agree with David that the community must not care. The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place being helpful enough to make it so these major flaws don't happen very often. I'm looking forward to that being a major shift in the way contributions and work is committed to the project - I think it would do worlds of good. Cheers, Ruppert -- Tim Ruppert HotWax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com o:801.649.6594 f:801.649.6595 On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. Actually, the devil is in the details.
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
There are other ways to do this without requiring automated tests for everything. For example, if someone cares about quality or more specifically about a particular thing working a particular way, what is stopping them from writing and contributing an automated test for it? In other words, there's no reason that the same people have to do implementation of functionality and test cases, and IMO if anyone blames a developer and is unwilling to do anything about it, that is just an excuse and an attempt to avoid taking responsibility and getting involved. The general idea is we need to do things that encourage more contribution, not less. Requiring automated tests for everything committed would likely reduce contributions. Encouraging people who care about things working in a certain way to contribute automated tests for those things would, hopefully, increase contributions. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Tim Ruppert wrote: Being a test-first, test-driven community would still be the best way to avoid that. Until we take a stance and reject everything that doesn't do this, then I guess I'd have to agree with David that the community must not care. The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place being helpful enough to make it so these major flaws don't happen very often. I'm looking forward to that being a major shift in the way contributions and work is committed to the project - I think it would do worlds of good. Cheers, Ruppert -- Tim Ruppert HotWax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com o:801.649.6594 f:801.649.6595 On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Understood David - but where are these magical elves that come by and test the entire system? They don't exist - that's the fact of the matter - or we'd see more business users sitting here and putting tests in place for the stuff that already exists. For my money, it goes back to putting tests around what you're doing so that you know that when someone else makes a change it doesn't break your functionality. Unfortunately it would require tests everywhere - something to aspire to for sure - to ensure you didn't break other people's work - but if they cared enough about their code working, then tests and reproduceability steps would seem a must to everyone. Hopefully more people will get involved in doing it on the existing functionality. Manually testing a system of this size, watching each and every commit that people do and tracking down the places where that commit could cause problems is something that we do for the good of the community, but as you know better than most, it relies on expert level people - not just anyone. If there were more tests, then anyone could add code and know that they needn't be scared about it. Since there aren't, I guess I'll either hire more elves or hope that other people start to contribute at this level as well. Cheers, Ruppert On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:04 PM, David E Jones wrote: There are other ways to do this without requiring automated tests for everything. For example, if someone cares about quality or more specifically about a particular thing working a particular way, what is stopping them from writing and contributing an automated test for it? In other words, there's no reason that the same people have to do implementation of functionality and test cases, and IMO if anyone blames a developer and is unwilling to do anything about it, that is just an excuse and an attempt to avoid taking responsibility and getting involved. The general idea is we need to do things that encourage more contribution, not less. Requiring automated tests for everything committed would likely reduce contributions. Encouraging people who care about things working in a certain way to contribute automated tests for those things would, hopefully, increase contributions. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Tim Ruppert wrote: Being a test-first, test-driven community would still be the best way to avoid that. Until we take a stance and reject everything that doesn't do this, then I guess I'd have to agree with David that the community must not care. The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place being helpful enough to make it so these major flaws don't happen very often. I'm looking forward to that being a major shift in the way contributions and work is committed to the project - I think it would do worlds of good. Cheers, Ruppert -- Tim Ruppert HotWax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com o:801.649.6594 f:801.649.6595 On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK,
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
I think we should 1st fix the bugs, then do other things, isn't that natural ? That's what I'm trying to do.- Jacques From: David E Jones d...@me.com It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. Actually, the devil is in the details. I'm not dissing 50 man- years of work, but how many years of work went into the code base prior to the 9.x release? And how many implementations are there of 4.x code vs. trunk releases since the branch? This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where the feature set of 4.0 would hit even close to the percentage of overlap that 09.04 does. That is good to know. Sounds like OFBiz is moving in the right direction. Whatever the case, depending on the circumstances I'd still recommend going with the trunk. For
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:16 PM, Tim Ruppert wrote: Understood David - but where are these magical elves that come by and test the entire system? They don't exist - that's the fact of the matter - or we'd see more business users sitting here and putting tests in place for the stuff that already exists. Who said anything about business users? The fact is they do exist. There are people who test and contribute fixes. We need more of them, not less. For my money, it goes back to putting tests around what you're doing so that you know that when someone else makes a change it doesn't break your functionality. Unfortunately it would require tests everywhere - something to aspire to for sure - to ensure you didn't break other people's work - but if they cared enough about their code working, then tests and reproduceability steps would seem a must to everyone. I agree that it would be better for people to contribute automated tests along with things they develop. However, that doesn't excuse other people for complaining and not doing anything but complain if something that someone else develops doesn't do what they think it should. Different people and organizations have different requirements, and not all of us have a sufficient level of omniscience to guess at the requirements that others are facing (I know I certainly don't!). Hopefully more people will get involved in doing it on the existing functionality. Manually testing a system of this size, watching each and every commit that people do and tracking down the places where that commit could cause problems is something that we do for the good of the community, but as you know better than most, it relies on expert level people - not just anyone. If there were more tests, then anyone could add code and know that they needn't be scared about it. On that magical day when we do have a majority coverage for automated tests I hope we don't start thinking that we don't need to be scared about changes! On the other hand, I think most us aren't scared enough about changes. On the other other hand, we do have a pretty healthy level of peer review and peer pressure that keeps things fairly straight. On that note, while a comment is a good form of peer pressure an automated test case would be far more clear and more persuasive... Since there aren't, I guess I'll either hire more elves or hope that other people start to contribute at this level as well. I don't think we need more expert people, just more careful people, and more people willing to write automated tests. I think that's what we're talking about anyway. Maybe people being afraid that they aren't experts is more of a problem than not having enough experts? On the other hand, if the da#$ experts weren't so lazy and selfish with their time they could solve all of our problems for us and none of us would have to worry about any of this! It's all the expert's fault that this is happening. Those $%^#ing selfish *(t#$ds. ;) -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:04 PM, David E Jones wrote: There are other ways to do this without requiring automated tests for everything. For example, if someone cares about quality or more specifically about a particular thing working a particular way, what is stopping them from writing and contributing an automated test for it? In other words, there's no reason that the same people have to do implementation of functionality and test cases, and IMO if anyone blames a developer and is unwilling to do anything about it, that is just an excuse and an attempt to avoid taking responsibility and getting involved. The general idea is we need to do things that encourage more contribution, not less. Requiring automated tests for everything committed would likely reduce contributions. Encouraging people who care about things working in a certain way to contribute automated tests for those things would, hopefully, increase contributions. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Tim Ruppert wrote: Being a test-first, test-driven community would still be the best way to avoid that. Until we take a stance and reject everything that doesn't do this, then I guess I'd have to agree with David that the community must not care. The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place being helpful enough to make it so these major flaws don't happen very often. I'm looking forward to that being a major shift in the way contributions and work is committed to the project - I think it would do worlds of good. Cheers, Ruppert -- Tim Ruppert HotWax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com o:801.649.6594 f:801.649.6595 On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi Tim: I couldn't agree with you more: The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place... It is a testament to the David's (and his collaborator's) brilliance. OFBiz's architecture, design an original implementation are still unrivaled. I am a true believer :-) Ruth Tim Ruppert wrote: Being a test-first, test-driven community would still be the best way to avoid that. Until we take a stance and reject everything that doesn't do this, then I guess I'd have to agree with David that the community must not care. The fact this project has gotten this far along without doing this is amazing and a testament to the tools (and the people) that have been put in place being helpful enough to make it so these major flaws don't happen very often. I'm looking forward to that being a major shift in the way contributions and work is committed to the project - I think it would do worlds of good. Cheers, Ruppert -- Tim Ruppert HotWax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com o:801.649.6594 f:801.649.6595 On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi David: Well, I for one care or I wouldn't have spent much of my very valuable summer writing two books about OFBiz. BTW, I intend to keep writing with the goal of getting new users connected with OFBiz. My target audience is new users and not necessarily project committers. If the project can figure out how to control releases, all the better. If not, then I stick to my guns. 4.x is still better than anything else I've seen. Ruth David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into things. Actually, the devil is in the details. I'm not dissing 50 man-years of work, but how many years of work went into the code base prior to the 9.x release? And how many implementations are there of 4.x code vs. trunk releases since the branch? This really isn't a small difference. When doing gap analysis based on a set of requirements I haven't seen any business looking for anything, ever, where
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
That's an interesting way of looking at it. What is your goal with those books, or what do you think they will cause to happen from a big picture perspective? What effect do you think they will have on OFBiz itself, especially since they document a version that is 2.5 years old? -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:55 PM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Well, I for one care or I wouldn't have spent much of my very valuable summer writing two books about OFBiz. BTW, I intend to keep writing with the goal of getting new users connected with OFBiz. My target audience is new users and not necessarily project committers. If the project can figure out how to control releases, all the better. If not, then I stick to my guns. 4.x is still better than anything else I've seen. Ruth David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the two releases, and probably around 50 man-years of effort went into
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi David: What I meant to say (and yes I am guilty of not proofing my email before hitting the send button): OFBiz 4.x is still better than any other enterprise application framework, e-commerce, ERP or all of the above, out there. I didn't mean to imply that 4.x is better than 9.04. Sorry for any hurt feelings. I make no claims to know whether 4.x is better than 9.04, only that I would recommend that new users look at 4.x first. Regards, Ruth Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Well, I for one care or I wouldn't have spent much of my very valuable summer writing two books about OFBiz. BTW, I intend to keep writing with the goal of getting new users connected with OFBiz. My target audience is new users and not necessarily project committers. If the project can figure out how to control releases, all the better. If not, then I stick to my guns. 4.x is still better than anything else I've seen. Ruth David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the documentation concerning how to work around theme based issues with the flatgrey theme was vague and contradictory (as was discussed here on this mailing list.) and pretty or not it really does cause problems and it's probably better to use it with the old flatgrey theme. There could certainly be other problems, but in general I'd say 09.04 is more solid and certainly much more feature complete. How about Jira #2602 - the very first thing you see when you start up the demo store is broken (in my book and in my browser). Sorry, but this does not bode well for the remainder of the demonstration and for a successful outcome should one be a new user testing the waters. As far as ad advertised goes, I wasn't aware there was anything advertised either way... ;) Exactly my point! Its all implied. And since we have nothing else to work with, older is better in this case. One nice thing about 09.04 is that the business processes are much more complete. In other words you can run through a business process and not find the big functional gaps that exist in 4.0. A LOT happened in the 2 years between the
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
Hi David: My goal is pretty simple: introduce the basic, end-user features and functions of OFBiz e-commerce to new users. I picked e-commerce because: 99% of the people out there know what e-commerce is and there is much interest in open source e-commerce solutions and OFBiz e-commerce features pretty much work out-of-the-box. The big picture? well, I don't know. Let me save a response to this for a rainy day when I'm not really busy finishing up some book related work. Actually, the documentation is really not about a version that is 2.5 years old. In fact, everything I talk about is in the latest trunk release (or should I say, releases dating back to the early summer). I think of the latest trunk release as an accumulation of features - most of which have been around for over 2 years. With one exception that I have brought to the project's attention, and which no one had a response to - I might add - the elements that I discuss in the book are all still working today as they did back then. IMHO, you shouldn't discount the value of earlier versions of OFBiz. Maybe we can talk further offline. I'm thinking this mailing list isn't too interested in much of this stuff. Regards, Ruth David E Jones wrote: That's an interesting way of looking at it. What is your goal with those books, or what do you think they will cause to happen from a big picture perspective? What effect do you think they will have on OFBiz itself, especially since they document a version that is 2.5 years old? -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:55 PM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Well, I for one care or I wouldn't have spent much of my very valuable summer writing two books about OFBiz. BTW, I intend to keep writing with the goal of getting new users connected with OFBiz. My target audience is new users and not necessarily project committers. If the project can figure out how to control releases, all the better. If not, then I stick to my guns. 4.x is still better than anything else I've seen. Ruth David E Jones wrote: It really is a bad sign. In a community driven project what this means is that no one cares enough about it to do anything about it... and I guess that's sad. Too much committing without testing, or even running, things. Too much not caring about existing functionality and creating new things that steamroll and break existing things. All in all, the stuff I tried to guide away from when I wrote the stuff here in the General Responsibilities of Committers: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities Like I've said recently on another topic... if no one else cares what can I do about it? I guess like everyone else I'll just keep doing my own thing... and collaborate with others when I can, and when they'll let me. -David On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Hi David: Thanks for your comments. As usually, they are well thought out and invaluable in helping furthering the understanding of the OFBiz project. IMHO, project releases are a really important concern for new users. By new users, I mean new users of the many and varied applications that come with the OFBiz distribution. Maybe we could call these users new end-users. I don't mean users intent on building new applications and/or modifying existing project files (i.e. Java code, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Groovy, XML etc.). New users may get to a point where they feel compelled to modify project files...but I suggest we don't put the cart before the horse. Please see my comments below: David E Jones wrote: I wouldn't say release4.0 or release09.04 have been proven either through formal release management practices or through actual experience in the field. In fact, 4.0 was a much more arbitrary cutoff point and not planned or acted on as much as 09.04. OK, point well taken. Maybe I should have said ...through time in service...? Regardless, the applications as they exist in the 4.x release work. Maybe the framework is not as advanced as the current trunk or 9.04 release, but the demo store works and the supporting applications work. Just out of curiosity, have there been any bugs reported after the 9.04 branch, that would make me believe that the Catalog Manager, Order Manager and eCommerce component are not stable and reliable in the 4.x release? You mentioned issues in 09.04, could you be more specific? Unfortunately I think many issues are related to the theme, Yes - themes seem to be problematic. And, since the very first encounter with OFBiz out-of-the-box is the presentation as rendered by the theme - I think there is a big issue here. In fact, IMHO this is what we use to call a show stopper and makes the release unstable. Doesn't matter how good the underlying product is, first impressions always count. Again, this is just my opinion. Back to themes: not only are themes problematic, I would point out the
Re: release 4.0 vs release 09.04?
I can't speak for all lurkers but I am always interested when a 25 email discussion gets underway :-) Regards Scott On 25/09/2009, at 7:25 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: Maybe we can talk further offline. I'm thinking this mailing list isn't too interested in much of this stuff. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
