Thanks for the very interesting history lesson. I guess what I'm really looking for is what the responsibilities of Avalon are vs. Merlin. Where are the boundries? What can Avalon do without Merlin, and vice-versa.
I am assuming that Merlin, with the standalone approach, will be able to run on top of other frameworks other than Avalon? If not, I don't see the point is spinning it out. > -----Original Message----- > From: Niclas Hedhman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: July 22, 2004 14:49 > To: Avalon framework users > Subject: Re: A Merlin Top Level Project > > > On Thursday 22 July 2004 13:14, David Leangen wrote: > > > Until now, I had thought that Avalon and Merlin necessarily worked > > together. Can one actually use Avalon without a component container like > > Merlin? > > Well, that depends on what you mean by "use". There are stuff in Avalon > Framework that can be used completely without any container. > But more importantly, there are other containers than Merlin. > Basically, Avalon started out with Excalibur Component Manager > (ECM) as the > first container, and Cocoon being the first and most important > "user". Later > Phoenix was built in parallel to deal with Avalon in a > 'stand-alone' fashion. > We could call these the first generation containers. > Fortress was initially developed as an interim solution for an > easy migration > path for ECM users. > Merlin took some ideas from Phoenix, but also had the ambition to > integrate > all the approaches into a single container. > The many people working on different containers have had a big problem to > agree on exactly how such convergence of the 4 containers should > look like. > > Five main things happened over a period of 1.5 - 2 years; > > * ECM was deprecated > > * Phoenix was deprecated, but forked into Loom and the developers went to > codehaus.org > > * A 'Single Unified Platform' vote was cast and passed earlier this year. > Merlin was considered the reference platform, and work started on > filling the > contract holes that existed. > > * Friction still remained, and both a "Excalibur TLP" > (Fortress-based) and a > Merlin TLP was proposed, but the higher ranking ASF folks thought > that was > too much, and said an Excalibur TLP was ok (and formed) but > Merlin-proponents > should continue with the 'Single Unified Platform' (SUP) that the > community > had decided on. > > * The recent site layout change exposed many subtle complimentary > changes of > Avalon in line (we thought) with the SUP, but the Excalibur > people felt that > this was completely unacceptable, and a massive debate rised at > all kinds of > levels, technical, personal, 'legal' and other. I.e. The active Avalon > committers (esp. myself & Stephen) was not considered good > guardians of the > Avalon Legacy and have failed to co-operate with Excalibur folks. > In my book, > the old in-fighting just remained, but over two projects instead > of within > one. > > I have tried to keep this rendition of history as objective as > possible, but > please note that I have been part of this process, and therefor > biased, some > way or the other. > > > In any case, my opinion is that it's important to get the > infighting over > > with as quickly as possible. > > I think everyone are in agreement with this, and have been so for > the last > couple of years, but obviously unable to stop it. > > > A few healthy academic discussions are > > necessary from time to time, but it sounds like things have degenerated > > beyond that. > > Yes it has. > I think Merlin is a great platform with enormous potential if nutured > correctly. We just want to get on doing that, with the feedback > of the users. > > Cheers > Niclas > -- > +------//-------------------+ > / http://www.bali.ac / > / http://niclas.hedhman.org / > +------//-------------------+ > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
