Beginner's doubts

[Alessandro Bottoni-5]

Hi All,
I'm using Java, Hibernate, Tapestry (5.0)  and Spring for starting a new
project. Given that Trails is using (almost) exactly this same tool set,
I'm telling myself that I do have to evaluate the adoption of the Trails
Framework for this project. Nevertheless, before adopting (yet another)
new tool, I would like to have a little chat with the people who are
already using it.

Here my doubts (no intention to offend anybody, of course):

1) What's the development status of Trails? Judging by the traffic on
the MLs, it looks like the peak of development activity was back in the
2007 and the peak of adoptions was back in 2008. In the last one or two
years, this activity seems to have slowed down a little bit. Is this a
sign of lack of interest in this framework or, just the opposite, is
this a consequence of a strong focus on the next (T5-compliant) release?
The SVN repository seems to demonstrate that Trails 2.0 is still under
active development. Can we be confident that Trails will still be
actively developed in the near future?

2) How far is the next, Tapestry5 compliant, release? I would not have
any real problem in using T4 but... if Trails 2.0 is near... Again, the
SVN activity seems to legitimate some good expectation for the near
future. Can we hope to see Trails 2.0 for the end of the year?

3) What about using Trails with Netbeans? I would not have any problem
in importing a Trails  Maven-generated project (Netbeans can open Maven
projects as they were native) but I still wonder if it is planned a
specific Netbeans plug-in, some specific best practice or something like
that.

4) Last but not least: how do you feel in using Trails, compared to the
use of its components alone (Tapestry, Spring, Hibernate)? Does Trails
add any real value? Does it add some more complexity? Is it worth?

Many thanks in advance for you attention.

--

Alessandro Bottoni
Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/

A computer is like an air conditioner: it stops working when you open
Windows.
     -- Unknown


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[Daniel Mejia-2]

I´m selecting tools for a new project and I have exactly the same  
questions...

I hope somebody can give us a clue about the future of trails...


Saludos,

Daniel.

El 14/10/2009, a las 03:54 a.m., Alessandro Bottoni escribió:

> Hi All,
> I'm using Java, Hibernate, Tapestry (5.0)  and Spring for starting a  
> new
> project. Given that Trails is using (almost) exactly this same tool  
> set,
> I'm telling myself that I do have to evaluate the adoption of the  
> Trails
> Framework for this project. Nevertheless, before adopting (yet  
> another)
> new tool, I would like to have a little chat with the people who are
> already using it.
>
> Here my doubts (no intention to offend anybody, of course):
>
> 1) What's the development status of Trails? Judging by the traffic on
> the MLs, it looks like the peak of development activity was back in  
> the
> 2007 and the peak of adoptions was back in 2008. In the last one or  
> two
> years, this activity seems to have slowed down a little bit. Is this a
> sign of lack of interest in this framework or, just the opposite, is
> this a consequence of a strong focus on the next (T5-compliant)  
> release?
> The SVN repository seems to demonstrate that Trails 2.0 is still under
> active development. Can we be confident that Trails will still be
> actively developed in the near future?
>
> 2) How far is the next, Tapestry5 compliant, release? I would not have
> any real problem in using T4 but... if Trails 2.0 is near... Again,  
> the
> SVN activity seems to legitimate some good expectation for the near
> future. Can we hope to see Trails 2.0 for the end of the year?
>
> 3) What about using Trails with Netbeans? I would not have any problem
> in importing a Trails  Maven-generated project (Netbeans can open  
> Maven
> projects as they were native) but I still wonder if it is planned a
> specific Netbeans plug-in, some specific best practice or something  
> like
> that.
>
> 4) Last but not least: how do you feel in using Trails, compared to  
> the
> use of its components alone (Tapestry, Spring, Hibernate)? Does Trails
> add any real value? Does it add some more complexity? Is it worth?
>
> Many thanks in advance for you attention.
>
> --
>
> Alessandro Bottoni
> Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/
>
> A computer is like an air conditioner: it stops working when you open
> Windows.
>     -- Unknown
>
>
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> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>

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[Kalle Korhonen-2]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Alessandro Bottoni
<alexbottoni@...> wrote:
> 1) What's the development status of Trails? Judging by the traffic on
> the MLs, it looks like the peak of development activity was back in the
> 2007 and the peak of adoptions was back in 2008. In the last one or two
> years, this activity seems to have slowed down a little bit. Is this a
> sign of lack of interest in this framework or, just the opposite, is
> this a consequence of a strong focus on the next (T5-compliant) release?
> The SVN repository seems to demonstrate that Trails 2.0 is still under
> active development. Can we be confident that Trails will still be
> actively developed in the near future?

I would pretty much agree with your observations with development
activity & adoption. It well coincides with Tapestry 4's own curve.
There's been Tapestry5 compatible Trails 2.0 snapshots available for
sometime and both of the committers are using them. Trails 1.x (for
Tapestry 4) is in maintenance mode.

> 2) How far is the next, Tapestry5 compliant, release? I would not have
> any real problem in using T4 but... if Trails 2.0 is near... Again, the
> SVN activity seems to legitimate some good expectation for the near
> future. Can we hope to see Trails 2.0 for the end of the year?

Behind the scenes (actually on the dev list) we've been mulling over
our strategy regarding Tapestry5. We lost the trailsframework.org
domain over a year ago (we, the current committers, never owned it so
it was complicated anyway) and ever since we've been in a stalemate
about what to do with it. We finally decided a month or so ago that
the easiest option is to just rename the project and launch Trails 2
under a new name - Tynamo (still hosted at Codehaus). This is
unannounced but the move is well under way and at this point we've
moved the codebase to a new repository and renamed the relevant
modules and packages. Overall, I think there's a pretty good chance
that we'll have the initial Tynamo release out before the end of the
year. We'll formally announce what I just said later.

> 3) What about using Trails with Netbeans? I would not have any problem
> in importing a Trails  Maven-generated project (Netbeans can open Maven
> projects as they were native) but I still wonder if it is planned a
> specific Netbeans plug-in, some specific best practice or something like
> that.

No specific plans regarding Netbeans. I generally use Eclipse,
Alejandro uses IDEA. But if stuff doesn't work with Netbeans, I'll be
more than happy to address any issues.

> 4) Last but not least: how do you feel in using Trails, compared to the
> use of its components alone (Tapestry, Spring, Hibernate)? Does Trails
> add any real value? Does it add some more complexity? Is it worth?

In Trails 2.x and now Tynamo, we already dropped Spring. Naturally you
can use Spring just as you can use it with any Tapestry application,
but Tynamo won't use any of Spring's features. Tapestry IoC is so
powerful and advanced that Spring doesn't have anything to offer there
and at the same time Hibernate, Javamail etc. have steadily improved
in features and usability which has greatly diminished the value of
the integration libraries Springs offers for them to a point that
Spring often just obscures things by providing another layer of
indirection. Additionally, new Tapestry5-to-some-other-framework
integration libraries have been popping like weed in the recent months
(now surprise given how easily you can contribute new services to
Tapestry IoC).

What the right choice for you depends on your needs and schedule. If
you are a new user of Tapestry (4/5), I'd spend some time just
learning Tapestry first. You'd appreciate more what Trails/Tynamo can
do for you if you have some experience doing it for yourself and it'll
be easier to understand how to customize it to do exactly what you
want. The sweet spot of Trails/Tynamo is still in the admin
interfaces. Plain Tapestry5 with its Bean UI components already offers
some of the advantages of model-driven development and are simpler to
apply on case-by-case basis in a custom end-user facing web interface.
Hopefully I was able to address most of your questions and I see you
on the Tynamo user list :)

Kalle

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[Alejandro Scandroli-2]

Ciao Alessandro

If you want to test drive Trails2/Tynamo to see what's working and
what's not, we have and archetype catalog in place. Try it and let us
know what you think:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://trails.codehaus.org/

Saluti.
Alejandro.

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Kalle Korhonen
<kalle.o.korhonen@...> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Alessandro Bottoni
> <alexbottoni@...> wrote:
>> 1) What's the development status of Trails? Judging by the traffic on
>> the MLs, it looks like the peak of development activity was back in the
>> 2007 and the peak of adoptions was back in 2008. In the last one or two
>> years, this activity seems to have slowed down a little bit. Is this a
>> sign of lack of interest in this framework or, just the opposite, is
>> this a consequence of a strong focus on the next (T5-compliant) release?
>> The SVN repository seems to demonstrate that Trails 2.0 is still under
>> active development. Can we be confident that Trails will still be
>> actively developed in the near future?
>
> I would pretty much agree with your observations with development
> activity & adoption. It well coincides with Tapestry 4's own curve.
> There's been Tapestry5 compatible Trails 2.0 snapshots available for
> sometime and both of the committers are using them. Trails 1.x (for
> Tapestry 4) is in maintenance mode.
>
>> 2) How far is the next, Tapestry5 compliant, release? I would not have
>> any real problem in using T4 but... if Trails 2.0 is near... Again, the
>> SVN activity seems to legitimate some good expectation for the near
>> future. Can we hope to see Trails 2.0 for the end of the year?
>
> Behind the scenes (actually on the dev list) we've been mulling over
> our strategy regarding Tapestry5. We lost the trailsframework.org
> domain over a year ago (we, the current committers, never owned it so
> it was complicated anyway) and ever since we've been in a stalemate
> about what to do with it. We finally decided a month or so ago that
> the easiest option is to just rename the project and launch Trails 2
> under a new name - Tynamo (still hosted at Codehaus). This is
> unannounced but the move is well under way and at this point we've
> moved the codebase to a new repository and renamed the relevant
> modules and packages. Overall, I think there's a pretty good chance
> that we'll have the initial Tynamo release out before the end of the
> year. We'll formally announce what I just said later.
>
>> 3) What about using Trails with Netbeans? I would not have any problem
>> in importing a Trails  Maven-generated project (Netbeans can open Maven
>> projects as they were native) but I still wonder if it is planned a
>> specific Netbeans plug-in, some specific best practice or something like
>> that.
>
> No specific plans regarding Netbeans. I generally use Eclipse,
> Alejandro uses IDEA. But if stuff doesn't work with Netbeans, I'll be
> more than happy to address any issues.
>
>> 4) Last but not least: how do you feel in using Trails, compared to the
>> use of its components alone (Tapestry, Spring, Hibernate)? Does Trails
>> add any real value? Does it add some more complexity? Is it worth?
>
> In Trails 2.x and now Tynamo, we already dropped Spring. Naturally you
> can use Spring just as you can use it with any Tapestry application,
> but Tynamo won't use any of Spring's features. Tapestry IoC is so
> powerful and advanced that Spring doesn't have anything to offer there
> and at the same time Hibernate, Javamail etc. have steadily improved
> in features and usability which has greatly diminished the value of
> the integration libraries Springs offers for them to a point that
> Spring often just obscures things by providing another layer of
> indirection. Additionally, new Tapestry5-to-some-other-framework
> integration libraries have been popping like weed in the recent months
> (now surprise given how easily you can contribute new services to
> Tapestry IoC).
>
> What the right choice for you depends on your needs and schedule. If
> you are a new user of Tapestry (4/5), I'd spend some time just
> learning Tapestry first. You'd appreciate more what Trails/Tynamo can
> do for you if you have some experience doing it for yourself and it'll
> be easier to understand how to customize it to do exactly what you
> want. The sweet spot of Trails/Tynamo is still in the admin
> interfaces. Plain Tapestry5 with its Bean UI components already offers
> some of the advantages of model-driven development and are simpler to
> apply on case-by-case basis in a custom end-user facing web interface.
> Hopefully I was able to address most of your questions and I see you
> on the Tynamo user list :)
>
> Kalle
>
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> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

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[Alessandro Bottoni-5]

Kalle Korhonen ha scritto:
> modules and packages. Overall, I think there's a pretty good chance
> that we'll have the initial Tynamo release out before the end of the
> year. We'll formally announce what I just said later.

Hi Kalle,
many, many thanks for your prompt and exhaustive replay.

The birth of Tynamo is a very good news for me (and for all of the
Trails users, I'm sure). I'll be happy to try it very soon (see
Alejandro's message).

> No specific plans regarding Netbeans. I generally use Eclipse,
> Alejandro uses IDEA. But if stuff doesn't work with Netbeans, I'll be
> more than happy to address any issues.

Many thanks for your attention to this topic. Actually, as I told in my
previous message, Trails 1.x seems to work pretty well with Netbeans.
Or, more exactly, you can easily import a existing Maven/Trails project
in Netbeans thanks to the smooth integration that exists between these
two tools. I did not try to add the Trails/Maven repository to the
Netbeans/Maven catalog, yet, but I'm pretty confident it would work fine
as well (see Netbeans menu: Windows/Other/Maven Repository Browser/Add
repository).

I'll go in depth with Trails and Netbeans in the next few weeks and I'll
let you know if anything requires your attention.

> In Trails 2.x and now Tynamo, we already dropped Spring. Naturally you
> can use Spring just as you can use it with any Tapestry application,
> but Tynamo won't use any of Spring's features. Tapestry IoC is so
> powerful and advanced that Spring doesn't have anything to offer there
> and at the same time Hibernate, Javamail etc. have steadily improved
> in features and usability which has greatly diminished the value of
> the integration libraries Springs offers for them to a point that
> Spring often just obscures things by providing another layer of
> indirection.

This is a good news for me. I completely agree with you about Spring.
I'll be more than happy to leave Spring apart and focus my attention on
a smaller set of tools.

> The sweet spot of Trails/Tynamo is still in the admin
> interfaces. Plain Tapestry5 with its Bean UI components already offers
> some of the advantages of model-driven development and are simpler to
> apply on case-by-case basis in a custom end-user facing web interface.

Actually, the main reason I'm looking at Trails/Tynamo is
standardization. I would be happy to find a way (a framework) to manage
our projects in a consistent way.

> Hopefully I was able to address most of your questions and I see you
> on the Tynamo user list :)

I'll be happy to hang around... :-)

Many thanks again for your attention.

--

Alessandro Bottoni
Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/

"Code we were, code we will became."
     -- CMOS after the fourth glass of "Cantucci and Vin Santo".

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[Alessandro Bottoni-5]

Alejandro Scandroli ha scritto:
> Ciao Alessandro

Ciao Alejandro,
are you italian (or of italian origin)? I live in Ferrara (40 km north
of Bologna). Do you know of other italian Trails users?

> If you want to test drive Trails2/Tynamo to see what's working and
> what's not, we have and archetype catalog in place. Try it and let us
> know what you think:
>
> mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://trails.codehaus.org/

I'll try it. I'll also try to add your repository to the list of
repository managed by Netbeans and I'll let you know if/how it works.

Ciao
--

Alessandro Bottoni
Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/

"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to
add but when there is no longer anything to take away."
     -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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[Alejandro Scandroli-2]

Ciao again Alessandro

I'm Argentinian, I'm Italian descendant. I have an Italian passport
and two of my brothers are living there.
I don't know any Trails user from Italy.
I notice that in the Tapestry list there is a few Italian Tapestry users


Cheers.
Alejandro.

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Alessandro Bottoni
<alexbottoni@...> wrote:

> Alejandro Scandroli ha scritto:
>> Ciao Alessandro
>
> Ciao Alejandro,
> are you italian (or of italian origin)? I live in Ferrara (40 km north
> of Bologna). Do you know of other italian Trails users?
>
>> If you want to test drive Trails2/Tynamo to see what's working and
>> what's not, we have and archetype catalog in place. Try it and let us
>> know what you think:
>>
>> mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://trails.codehaus.org/
>
> I'll try it. I'll also try to add your repository to the list of
> repository managed by Netbeans and I'll let you know if/how it works.
>
> Ciao
> --
>
> Alessandro Bottoni
> Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/
>
> "Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to
> add but when there is no longer anything to take away."
>     -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
>    http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>

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[Alessandro Bottoni-5]

Alejandro Scandroli ha scritto:
> Ciao again Alessandro
>
> I'm Argentinian, I'm Italian descendant. I have an Italian passport
> and two of my brothers are living there.

Pleased to meet you, and hope to meet you in person, sooner or later :-)

> I don't know any Trails user from Italy.
> I notice that in the Tapestry list there is a few Italian Tapestry users

Well, I hope we will create a lively italian community around Tynamo
(Trails2) in the future.

Maybe I will translate into italian, or write it directly, some
Trails/Tynamo documentation in the future. Just let me study this stuff
a little bit more.

Ciao

--

Alessandro Bottoni
Website: http://www.alessandrobottoni.it/

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time
to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
     -- Oscar Wilde

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