springframework-rcp-dev

[Springframework-rcp-dev] Spring Richclient Status & Future

[Jan H. <jh...@sc...>]

Hi,

As you may know, we had planned to have a Spring Richclient 1.0 release
somewhere at the end of Januari. It's March already and no release has
been pushed out. Don't start to panic just yet, I'll let you in on the
details.

Somewhere in Januari I contacted the people of SpringSource to discuss
the position of Spring Richclient within the Spring universe. As we're
in different parts of the world, it takes some time to schedule a
meeting online and contact the right people, thus time was creeping past
the previously set release date. Our goal with this meetings was to not
only discuss the present and future of the project but also the
involvement of SpringSource. The outcome is the following.

Current codebase:

We have set a new target date for the release: March 17. All bugs should
be fixed while documentation will be provided as needed. We don't want
this to delay the release date anymore and interfere with our future
plans. If documentation is requested at some point, we'll provide this
on the developer blog. This release will have maintenance updates as
requested.

Future plans:

We've decided to start a new codebase and re-brand the project to Spring
Desktop. One of the reasons behind this is the possibility to update the
existing core techniques after some research. The current codebase core
is about two years old, quite stable but not state-of-the-art anymore.
Another reason is that this allows us to start with the modularity in
mind and review the existing codebase. 

We're doing some research in several areas right now and plan to start
with the codebase right after the Spring Richclient 1.0 release. We'll
take advantage of this new start to shift to the SpringSource
infrastructure (svn) as well. The aim is to align Spring Desktop 1.0
(mind the name!)  with the next big Spring release train somewhere in
October.

SpringSource will help us out by providing the infrastructure, being
involved in the defining of the project (scope/roadmap) and devoting
some time for research and coding. They've made it clear that they find
this project to be valuable and want to align it with the future Spring
release.

I hope this clears things up and removes any doubt about where this
project stands and is heading towards.

ps: if you're enchanted by these words don't hesitate to pull up your
sleeves and help us out by sending in patches/documentation or just by
providing us with your feedback at the forum
(http://forum.springframework.org/forumdisplay.php?f=28) or the
developers maillist (spr...@li...).

Kind Regards,
Jan


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Re: [Springframework-rcp-dev] Spring Richclient Status & Future

[Rogan D. <ro...@da...>]

Jan Hoskens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As you may know, we had planned to have a Spring Richclient 1.0 release
> somewhere at the end of Januari. It's March already and no release has
> been pushed out. Don't start to panic just yet, I'll let you in on the
> details.
> 
> Somewhere in Januari I contacted the people of SpringSource to discuss
> the position of Spring Richclient within the Spring universe. As we're
> in different parts of the world, it takes some time to schedule a
> meeting online and contact the right people, thus time was creeping past
> the previously set release date. Our goal with this meetings was to not
> only discuss the present and future of the project but also the
> involvement of SpringSource. The outcome is the following.
> 
> Current codebase:
> 
> We have set a new target date for the release: March 17. All bugs should
> be fixed while documentation will be provided as needed. We don't want
> this to delay the release date anymore and interfere with our future
> plans. If documentation is requested at some point, we'll provide this
> on the developer blog. This release will have maintenance updates as
> requested.
> 
> Future plans:
> 
> We've decided to start a new codebase and re-brand the project to Spring
> Desktop. One of the reasons behind this is the possibility to update the
> existing core techniques after some research. The current codebase core
> is about two years old, quite stable but not state-of-the-art anymore.
> Another reason is that this allows us to start with the modularity in
> mind and review the existing codebase. 

In order to get something usable by October, I assume that the plan is 
to migrate a lot of the existing code from Spring RCP?

Any thoughts on how folks should migrate their applications? i.e. how 
much change to you expect to see between the current (1.0) RCP and the 
future Desktop?

Do you intend to create a whole new package structure (e.g. 
org.springframework.desktop)? That will obviously mean a fair amount of 
work for people moving over (unless the actual class names stay the 
same, then maybe the IDE's can resolve them automatically).

Regards,

Rogan

Re: [Springframework-rcp-dev] Spring Richclient Status & Future

[Jan H. <jh...@sc...>]

> In order to get something usable by October, I assume that the plan is 
> to migrate a lot of the existing code from Spring RCP?

We would prefer narrowing the scope to provide a solid release instead
of migrating bags of code to have all the features in a so-so state. We
also want to align the code with the current technologies and have a
modular approach from the start. This doesn't mean that we won't to port
any code at all but that it should be reviewed as thoroughly as possible
and with a clean view.

> 
> Any thoughts on how folks should migrate their applications? i.e. how 
> much change to you expect to see between the current (1.0) RCP and the 
> future Desktop?
> 
> Do you intend to create a whole new package structure (e.g. 
> org.springframework.desktop)? That will obviously mean a fair amount of 
> work for people moving over (unless the actual class names stay the 
> same, then maybe the IDE's can resolve them automatically).

You could look upon the Spring Desktop as a new project with a lot of
influence from Spring Richclient. We don't want to have all the bagage
of the current codebase and have our hands tied. This is the moment to
fix things at the core where needed. So there will probably be a lot of
changes, but I can't predict the future and put a number on how much of
a change it will be.

A few remarks if you're using Spring Richclient now:
- I too am using the current framework in several products, so I'll be
thinking of the migration issue as well. I would like to have a
migration guide between the two as our company will have to make this
step too.
- current codebase is not going to abandoned, maintenance will continue
during the development of the new project as needed
- packages/modules will probably be renamed 

I'll collect any concerns/remarks that are made so that these won't get
lost. Thanks for sharing yours.

Kind Regards,
Jan


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