Niall Pemberton wrote:
On 4/18/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I would venture to guess, just as an outside observer, that if the
author of Strecks is not given commit access to Struts itself, then he
may run into limitations in the Struts codebase and end up making
modifications to support things that Strecks needs, and end up with a
forked version of the Struts 1.x code.
I would hope not.
Of course, logically, if this guy is interested in developing further on
top of Struts 1.x, and existing Struts committers aren't, he probably
should be let in and Strecks might as well become Struts 1.3.x. or
Struts 1.4.x and so on.
Strecks requires JDK 1.5 and I don't believe we're ready to make this
a minimum requirement for Struts at this point in time. So at the
moment I don't believe it could be anything other than an optional add
on. If it was a separate Struts sub-module then obviously it would
have more credibility - but starting out as a sourceforge project
seems like a good plan IMO.
Well, the above may contain something of an all-or-none fallacy. As I
understand it, Strecks is a set of extensions. As a whole, it requires
Java 5, but there may well be pieces of it that could be rolled into the
Struts 1.x code that would not create a Java 5 dependency. Though I do
not know for sure...
Also, I speculated out loud that, even if Strecks is a separate project,
it might be very useful for Phil to be able to make changes or additions
to the Struts code itself to support things he's doing.
Phil may correct me if I've got this wrong, but I believe it was his
aim to provide this functionality to existing Struts 1.2.x users and
has developed it based on the 1.2.x code, rather than 1.3.x. In fact I
believe it would have been easier to develop it for 1.3 - but that
wasn't his aim. If there are things we could change to make
integrating Strecks easier then Phil is welcome to submit patches
through bugzilla.
Well, yeah, that's the theory, okay. But as a practical matter, with all
the attention moving over to Webwork and Shale, what is the prognosis of
him (or anyone else, it's not about Phil specifically) getting any kind
of rapid turnaround on any issues he brings up this way?
But Niall, you are dancing around the central question again. Why not
just give somebody like Phil commit access?
Earlier, there was a discussion that turned nasty in which I
specifically posed the question of why development on Struts 1.x stagnated.
Isn't this kind of thing just a case in point?
You have no plans for doing *anything* with Struts 1.x. Nothing. Zilch,
zero, squat, yet you *still* maintain this reflexive reaction against
letting people in to work on it. Now, I don't want to get intentionally
vulgar, but this brings to mind the saying: "Sh*t or get off the pot.".
Common sense now just seems to suggest that that if Struts committers
have no intention of doing anything with that codebase, there is simply
no legitimate reason to deny commit access to people who do want to do
something with it.
Now, to focus some further conversation, here is an excerpt from some
private email correspondence I had a few weeks ago. I am not going to
disclose who wrote the following, but you can believe that somebody did
write it:
"Yep, that's how I see it too. It's more about kissing the right ass
than producing the right code. I admit I once wanted to become a
committer. I thought I could do a lot of good. I don't really care any
more. I'd probably accept if asked, I guess, but the fact is that'll
never happen. I had the balls to have my own opinion on things, and Ted
and Craig and Co. would spin that as not "understanding the ASF way",
but that's a load of crap because if the ASF way is that you have to
agree with whatever everyone else says, then that's not something I want
to be a part of. It's one thing to go along with the consensus, which
is how it should work, but they seem to not even want to hear about it
if you disagree, and that is, to my mind, clearly wrong."
This is from somebody who has contributed to other open source projects
and frequently helps out users on this list.
Doesn't this speak for itself?
I mean to say, Niall, basically I think I know why Struts 1.x
development stagnated. Also, I venture to say that you do as well.
So, look, you guys have run this project your way as a closed club (fan
club?) and shut out people who could have contributed. And this approach
has led to complete stagnation of the project. I think it's time to
simply face up to the failure of your approach. Maybe, Niall, just
maybe, if you just dropped all this forced pretense, it would be a
relief of sorts. Surely you know that people with a modicum of
critical/analytical intelligence can see through what has been going on
here.
Now, as regards the "merger" with Webwork, I guess my main objection to
it is that it is a fancy operation engineered to mask your failures on
the project management front. And I do not think that is in anybody's
interests.
We would prefer them for the current code base
(1.3.x) - although theres no reason why 1.2.x changes can't be
requested, except there may be no appetite for further 1.2.x releases.
If there is interest in changing Struts to accomodate Strecks, then it
would be more appropriate to continue discussion on the dev list
though.
Well, that could be. I am just a guy engaged in a conversation and I
don't have strong notions about struts-user vs. struts-dev. If you feel
strongly about this, you could cross-post and set the "reply-to" to the
dev list and the conversation would resume there. That said, my own
sense of things is that there is not a very strong reason to change
venue. Basically, there is quite a significant gray area between what
clearly belongs on a user list and on a dev list. Also, frankly, I
suspect that you want to get this conversation off the user list mostly
because you find it uncomfortable, even embarassing, but that's not
really a legitimate reason.
Anyway, earlier some discussion developed about this kind of stuff. You
wrote something and I wrote a reply here:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.jakarta.struts.user/123923/match=pemberton+revusky
You never replied. I am still interested as to what you say about the
points I brought up there.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Niall
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