Introduction

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

Greetings,

My name is Nils Kilden-Pedersen. I've started a personal Scala project and have found myself writing library code that is missing from Scala. I thought some of that might be useful as general library classes and figured Scalax was the right place to contribute.

With that said, could someone comment on the state of this project? I don't see a lot of activity on the mailing list and the last release was in August 2008.

Regards,
Nils

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

With that said, could someone comment on the state of this project? I don't see a lot of activity on the mailing list and the last release was in August 2008.

No response on this mailing list, nor any response from Jamie Webb to my direct email request. I conclude this project is dead.

[Paul Phillips-3]

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 07:09:32AM -0500, Nils Kilden-Pedersen wrote:
> No response on this mailing list, nor any response from Jamie Webb to
> my direct email request. I conclude this project is dead.

I don't know if there are others who fall into my category, but I find
there's so much work to do on the main scala distribution I have little
time or need for a scalax.  Maybe someday when the mainline is quite a
bit more mature.

--
Paul Phillips      | Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume
Apatheist          | that he is a fool.  After he speaks, it is seldom
Empiricist         | necessary to assume it.
all hip pupils!    |     -- H. L. Mencken

[Erik Engbrecht]

The original idea behind scalax was that it would be kind of a proving ground for improvements to the Scala standard library, but the community never really developed.  It was kind of a response to a constant stream of critisism of the Scala libraries and lots of ideas for enhancements.

I think most people who have projects, or who have experimental forks to Scala have just put them on other project hosting sites like BitBucket and GitHub.  Also, the number of Scala commiters has grown substantially since then, so there are more people who can contribute their ideas directly to the main Scala project rather than going through an intermediate step.

My suggestion would be to pick a social code site, put your library there, and then post to the Scala mailing list about it.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Paul Phillips <paulp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 07:09:32AM -0500, Nils Kilden-Pedersen wrote:
> No response on this mailing list, nor any response from Jamie Webb to
> my direct email request. I conclude this project is dead.

I don't know if there are others who fall into my category, but I find
there's so much work to do on the main scala distribution I have little
time or need for a scalax.  Maybe someday when the mainline is quite a
bit more mature.

--
Paul Phillips      | Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume
Apatheist          | that he is a fool.  After he speaks, it is seldom
Empiricist         | necessary to assume it.
all hip pupils!    |     -- H. L. Mencken

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

The original idea behind scalax was that it would be kind of a proving ground for improvements to the Scala standard library, but the community never really developed.  It was kind of a response to a constant stream of critisism of the Scala libraries and lots of ideas for enhancements.

I think most people who have projects, or who have experimental forks to Scala have just put them on other project hosting sites like BitBucket and GitHub.  Also, the number of Scala commiters has grown substantially since then, so there are more people who can contribute their ideas directly to the main Scala project rather than going through an intermediate step.

My suggestion would be to pick a social code site, put your library there, and then post to the Scala mailing list about it.

I think your last suggestion is fine for a stand-alone project, but less good for general library classes. That sort of stuff is better suited for either the Scala distro itself or a couple larger standalone projects. Otherwise it just gets lost in the forest.
BTW, I never considered the Scala library itself, probably because of how Java always worked, i.e. you couldn't really contribute to the JDK. How does that work with Scala? Are there requirements and scope, or can any nitwit, like myself, commit various random code to it?

[Erik Engbrecht]

I'm not a committer, but I think it works link any other project.  Start offering up patches or contributions and Martin and company will decide if they want to accept them and eventually if you should be given commit rights.  You probably should both post any contributions to track and send an email to the Scala Internals mailing list.

BTW - I actually think Scalax was/is a good idea, it just may have been too early.  The core Scala community of contributors hasn't finished forming yet.  There's still alot of core Scala code that I think is essentially unmaintained.  It's a big codebase and it really needs a bigger set of maintainers.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

The original idea behind scalax was that it would be kind of a proving ground for improvements to the Scala standard library, but the community never really developed.  It was kind of a response to a constant stream of critisism of the Scala libraries and lots of ideas for enhancements.

I think most people who have projects, or who have experimental forks to Scala have just put them on other project hosting sites like BitBucket and GitHub.  Also, the number of Scala commiters has grown substantially since then, so there are more people who can contribute their ideas directly to the main Scala project rather than going through an intermediate step.

My suggestion would be to pick a social code site, put your library there, and then post to the Scala mailing list about it.

I think your last suggestion is fine for a stand-alone project, but less good for general library classes. That sort of stuff is better suited for either the Scala distro itself or a couple larger standalone projects. Otherwise it just gets lost in the forest.
BTW, I never considered the Scala library itself, probably because of how Java always worked, i.e. you couldn't really contribute to the JDK. How does that work with Scala? Are there requirements and scope, or can any nitwit, like myself, commit various random code to it?

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Josh Suereth]

I agree.  I think scalax is an amazing idea.  I'd love to see the dream come to fruition (or contribute code back into scala).  What do you think we need to do to make Scalax the defacto place for "scala++" libraries?

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

I'm not a committer, but I think it works link any other project.  Start offering up patches or contributions and Martin and company will decide if they want to accept them and eventually if you should be given commit rights.  You probably should both post any contributions to track and send an email to the Scala Internals mailing list.

BTW - I actually think Scalax was/is a good idea, it just may have been too early.  The core Scala community of contributors hasn't finished forming yet.  There's still alot of core Scala code that I think is essentially unmaintained.  It's a big codebase and it really needs a bigger set of maintainers.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

The original idea behind scalax was that it would be kind of a proving ground for improvements to the Scala standard library, but the community never really developed.  It was kind of a response to a constant stream of critisism of the Scala libraries and lots of ideas for enhancements.

I think most people who have projects, or who have experimental forks to Scala have just put them on other project hosting sites like BitBucket and GitHub.  Also, the number of Scala commiters has grown substantially since then, so there are more people who can contribute their ideas directly to the main Scala project rather than going through an intermediate step.

My suggestion would be to pick a social code site, put your library there, and then post to the Scala mailing list about it.

I think your last suggestion is fine for a stand-alone project, but less good for general library classes. That sort of stuff is better suited for either the Scala distro itself or a couple larger standalone projects. Otherwise it just gets lost in the forest.
BTW, I never considered the Scala library itself, probably because of how Java always worked, i.e. you couldn't really contribute to the JDK. How does that work with Scala? Are there requirements and scope, or can any nitwit, like myself, commit various random code to it?

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@...> wrote:

I agree.  I think scalax is an amazing idea.  I'd love to see the dream come to fruition (or contribute code back into scala).  What do you think we need to do to make Scalax the defacto place for "scala++" libraries?

So long as the person(s) in charge of the project are non-respondent, it's going to be really hard.

[Erik Engbrecht]

Well, let's see...

First, types of projects:
1. Experimental "fork" of something within the core of Scala
    Examples:  http://github.com/paulp/scala/tree/master and http://bitbucket.org/eengbrec/scala-enhancements/
2. Add-on libraries
    Examples:  http://code.google.com/p/sbinary/ http://code.google.com/p/scalaz/ and of course scalax

...and then there's the "do we want a forge" or "do we want a project" or "do we just need a linked-together community" question...

I think #1 is needed more right now, probably with less experimentation and more old-fashioned code cleanup.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@...> wrote:

I agree.  I think scalax is an amazing idea.  I'd love to see the dream come to fruition (or contribute code back into scala).  What do you think we need to do to make Scalax the defacto place for "scala++" libraries?

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

I'm not a committer, but I think it works link any other project.  Start offering up patches or contributions and Martin and company will decide if they want to accept them and eventually if you should be given commit rights.  You probably should both post any contributions to track and send an email to the Scala Internals mailing list.

BTW - I actually think Scalax was/is a good idea, it just may have been too early.  The core Scala community of contributors hasn't finished forming yet.  There's still alot of core Scala code that I think is essentially unmaintained.  It's a big codebase and it really needs a bigger set of maintainers.

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

The original idea behind scalax was that it would be kind of a proving ground for improvements to the Scala standard library, but the community never really developed.  It was kind of a response to a constant stream of critisism of the Scala libraries and lots of ideas for enhancements.

I think most people who have projects, or who have experimental forks to Scala have just put them on other project hosting sites like BitBucket and GitHub.  Also, the number of Scala commiters has grown substantially since then, so there are more people who can contribute their ideas directly to the main Scala project rather than going through an intermediate step.

My suggestion would be to pick a social code site, put your library there, and then post to the Scala mailing list about it.

I think your last suggestion is fine for a stand-alone project, but less good for general library classes. That sort of stuff is better suited for either the Scala distro itself or a couple larger standalone projects. Otherwise it just gets lost in the forest.
BTW, I never considered the Scala library itself, probably because of how Java always worked, i.e. you couldn't really contribute to the JDK. How does that work with Scala? Are there requirements and scope, or can any nitwit, like myself, commit various random code to it?

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

Well, let's see...

First, types of projects:
1. Experimental "fork" of something within the core of Scala
    Examples:  http://github.com/paulp/scala/tree/master and http://bitbucket.org/eengbrec/scala-enhancements/
2. Add-on libraries
    Examples:  http://code.google.com/p/sbinary/ http://code.google.com/p/scalaz/ and of course scalax

I think #1 is needed more right now, probably with less experimentation and more old-fashioned code cleanup.

Needed for whom though? No doubt #1 is needed more for the community as a whole, and there are people working on that, but that does not mean there's no need for #2. In fact I have that need, which is why I posted to this group. I've had to write basic library code, because it's missing from Scala and the current extension libraries. Is there no value in contributing that? Of course there is.

[Erik Engbrecht]

On the contrary, I think it's direly needed.  I'd lump it in #1.  Perhaps I labeled it poorly.

What does your library provide?

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

Well, let's see...

First, types of projects:
1. Experimental "fork" of something within the core of Scala
    Examples:  http://github.com/paulp/scala/tree/master and http://bitbucket.org/eengbrec/scala-enhancements/
2. Add-on libraries
    Examples:  http://code.google.com/p/sbinary/ http://code.google.com/p/scalaz/ and of course scalax

I think #1 is needed more right now, probably with less experimentation and more old-fashioned code cleanup.

Needed for whom though? No doubt #1 is needed more for the community as a whole, and there are people working on that, but that does not mean there's no need for #2. In fact I have that need, which is why I posted to this group. I've had to write basic library code, because it's missing from Scala and the current extension libraries. Is there no value in contributing that? Of course there is.

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Jesse Eichar-4]

I think the issue with #1 is time to inclusion.  Little projects like scalax can have a much faster turn around time than the entire Scala language since its audience is so much smaller.  If I write something I need right now I dont want to maintain a branch of scala and keep updating it to get the latest changes.  I want a library that I can reuse with Scala when the latest version comes out.  That said I would love to have elements of the library moved into Scala core when they have proven themselves.

I have actually made a fork of Scalax as of like 4 days ago since the project seems dead and several of my project depend on it.  It is currently private but maybe we can get together start a new project?

For helping with Scala itself I think I would like to start doing that soon.  I have a couple brutal deadlines but perhaps I can start before too long.  Even so I dont think it hurts to have a library which could be considered the "incubation" stage for the Scala language.

Jesse

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

On the contrary, I think it's direly needed.  I'd lump it in #1.  Perhaps I labeled it poorly.

What does your library provide?

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen <nilskp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Erik Engbrecht <erik.engbrecht@...> wrote:

Well, let's see...

First, types of projects:
1. Experimental "fork" of something within the core of Scala
    Examples:  http://github.com/paulp/scala/tree/master and http://bitbucket.org/eengbrec/scala-enhancements/
2. Add-on libraries
    Examples:  http://code.google.com/p/sbinary/ http://code.google.com/p/scalaz/ and of course scalax

I think #1 is needed more right now, probably with less experimentation and more old-fashioned code cleanup.

Needed for whom though? No doubt #1 is needed more for the community as a whole, and there are people working on that, but that does not mean there's no need for #2. In fact I have that need, which is why I posted to this group. I've had to write basic library code, because it's missing from Scala and the current extension libraries. Is there no value in contributing that? Of course there is.

--
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/

[Jon Pretty]

Hi Nils and everyone,

Nils Kilden-Pedersen wrote:
> With that said, could someone comment on the state of this project? I
> don't see a lot of activity on the mailing list and the last release was
> in August 2008.

Well, Scalax has lapsed from Jamie's and my consciousness a little bit.
 Jamie is no longer involved with Sygneca on a day-to-day basis, and I
am currently working on other projects.

But a lot of work was put into setting the project up, it currently
weighs in at about 6000 LoC and it would be a real shame to lose that.

I see the following main problems at the moment:

  1. The project currently has no leadership
  2. Not enough people know about the project

I think that Scalax needs some life breathing into it, and I'd like to
dedicate some time to doing that.  Some initial thoughts on how we
should go about that:

 * Engage with the Scala mailing lists.  Make them more aware of the
project; encourage them to use it in their own projects and to
contribute; encourage requests for new features.

 * Improve the website and documentation.  Some code examples would be
nice, even though they're likely to change...

 * Appoint one or more people to lead the project forwards.  As Sygneca
is the legal entity which owns, licenses and assumes liability for the
code, that makes me de-facto overlord, however I'd prefer somebody else
(if possible) to oversee the technical direction of the project.

I'd like to devote a few days over the next month to driving Scalax
forwards and try to make it into a useful and popular project, which I
think is all it needs.

Any thoughts, encouragement, dissent, etc, or shall I just get on with it?

Cheers,
Jon

[Paul Phillips-3]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:06:33PM +0100, Jon Pretty wrote:
>  * Engage with the Scala mailing lists.  Make them more aware of the
> project; encourage them to use it in their own projects and to
> contribute; encourage requests for new features.

If people are amenable to it, and assuming the essential goal is to see
useful code in more peoples' hands regardless of how it arrives there,
what would really help is pointing me at scalax code which we believe to
be of high quality and which addresses a deficiency in the standard
library.  I would be happy to investigate integrating it with the scala
distribution.

--
Paul Phillips      | The important thing here is that the music is not in
In Theory          | the piano.  And knowledge and edification is not in the
Empiricist         | computer.  The computer is simply an instrument whose
pp: i haul pills   | music is ideas.  -- Alan Kay

[Jorge Ortiz-3]

I consistently find myself coming back to Scalax for the IO stuff. It's better than Source, but I don't know if it's ready to go in the standard library (don't ask me how that's in any way logical...).

--j

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 8:18 AM, Paul Phillips <paulp@...> wrote:

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:06:33PM +0100, Jon Pretty wrote:
>  * Engage with the Scala mailing lists.  Make them more aware of the
> project; encourage them to use it in their own projects and to
> contribute; encourage requests for new features.

If people are amenable to it, and assuming the essential goal is to see
useful code in more peoples' hands regardless of how it arrives there,
what would really help is pointing me at scalax code which we believe to
be of high quality and which addresses a deficiency in the standard
library.  I would be happy to investigate integrating it with the scala
distribution.

--
Paul Phillips      | The important thing here is that the music is not in
In Theory          | the piano.  And knowledge and edification is not in the
Empiricist         | computer.  The computer is simply an instrument whose
pp: i haul pills   | music is ideas.  -- Alan Kay

[Nils Kilden-Pedersen]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Jon Pretty <jon.pretty@...> wrote:

Well, Scalax has lapsed from Jamie's and my consciousness a little bit.
 Jamie is no longer involved with Sygneca on a day-to-day basis, and I
am currently working on other projects.

I think the first thing to do is to update the website contacts with a person/people who will actually answer an email.
 

Any thoughts, encouragement, dissent, etc, or shall I just get on with it?

Just get on with it :-)

[Jon Pretty]

Hi Paul,

Paul Phillips wrote:
> If people are amenable to it, and assuming the essential goal is to see
> useful code in more peoples' hands regardless of how it arrives there,
> what would really help is pointing me at scalax code which we believe to
> be of high quality and which addresses a deficiency in the standard
> library.  I would be happy to investigate integrating it with the scala
> distribution.

That's a reasonable goal, though I wonder if it might be more effective
to establish Scalax as a nimble feeder project for Scala library code
first.  There's also a debate about how slim the standard Scala
distribution should be: there are certainly packages in the standard
library which oughtn't be there, and I don't think Martin is keen to add
too many more...

I'm also not sure whether there is anything in Scalax which should be
considered mature enough to go into the standard library yet (I agree
with Jorge on the IO stuff) but I'd like to see the parts of Scalax
'promoted' to Scala in the long term.

So I'm happy for code to progress into the standard library in the long
term, but I'd like Scalax to reach a critical mass (and doesn't almost
die again) before that becomes the focus.

Cheers,
Jon

P.S. Jamie has just pointed out to me that I need to clarify my earlier
point about code ownership:  Sygneca owns the code Sygneca contributed,
and other contributors retain ownership rights over the code they have
contributed.

[David MacIver]

2009/5/12 Jorge Ortiz <jorge.ortiz@...>:
> I consistently find myself coming back to Scalax for the IO stuff. It's
> better than Source, but I don't know if it's ready to go in the standard
> library (don't ask me how that's in any way logical...).

I like scalax.io, but I think I wouldn't want it in the standard
library. It's too transparently a wrapper around java.io (it's
basically a great big pimp my library), and I'd much rather scala.io
was an independent library in its own right. I think including the
scalax.io stuff in the standard library would doom chances of that
happening.

[Jon Pretty]

Hi Nils,

Nils Kilden-Pedersen wrote:
> I think the first thing to do is to update the website contacts with a
> person/people who will actually answer an email.

Done.

> Just get on with it :-)

Great.  Will do.

Cheers,
Jon

[Stepan Koltsov]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 19:47, David MacIver <david.maciver@...> wrote:

> 2009/5/12 Jorge Ortiz <jorge.ortiz@...>:
>> I consistently find myself coming back to Scalax for the IO stuff. It's
>> better than Source, but I don't know if it's ready to go in the standard
>> library (don't ask me how that's in any way logical...).
>
> I like scalax.io, but I think I wouldn't want it in the standard
> library. It's too transparently a wrapper around java.io (it's
> basically a great big pimp my library), and I'd much rather scala.io
> was an independent library in its own right. I think including the
> scalax.io stuff in the standard library would doom chances of that
> happening.

Disagree. IO is a very basic thing that is needed in everyday
programming. Having external library is not a problem for a large
project, but when you write something small, the need of having
several extra libraries is a headache.

One of reasons of Python success is its great (but not big) standard library.

java.io is very basic and inconvenient library, I don't use it
directly even in Java.

S.