Health of Java Hamcrest Project

[Eric Thelin]

Hi!

I have been using Hamcrest for several years, both professionally and for my personal projects. Generally I am very happy with the library and plan to continue using it going forward.

When I recently visited the Java Hamcrest github pages it struck me that the source code has not been updated since 2016. This made me wondering about the health of the Java Hamcrest project. I also noted the seemingly stale v2.x, v2.0.0.0 and v7.0 branches.

I understand that this is an open source project and that people are contributing in their spare time and as such, I cannot expect any form of ongoing support for the project. However, if the project activity is fading maybe me and my team are better of migrating to another matcher library such as AssertJ instead of increasing  our use of the Hamcrest matchers.

How is the health of the Java Hamcrest project?

Is the project slowly dying?

What is up with the v2.x, v2.0.0.0 and v7.0 branches?

Best regards,

Eric Thelin

[Antonio Di Maio]

Good point

[Steve Freeman]

I had some ideas and made a start on a new revision a couple of years ago, but events... In the meantime, I've found that it does most everything I need for now and its extensibility makes the other things pretty easy.

I would like to see Hamcrest continue because I use it all the time and I think it has some advantages over AssertJ. I think it's really important that there be an alternative founded on composition, rather than code generation.

The tricky bits are that we committers have been working in other environments for a while, and we have to decide what to do about Java 8. There's still plenty of Java 7 in the world, even if it is officially retired.

I did ask for volunteer committers a while ago and, to my shame, didn't follow through. Perhaps we could do the another call and this time I should actually get organised?

S

[Colin Vipurs]

I'll put my hand up to volunteer.

I don't do an awful lot of JUnit anymore, favouring Spock, but I definitely owe so much to Hamcrest and still make use of it in my Spock tests.

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Maybe she awoke to see the roommate's boyfriend swinging from the chandelier wearing a boar's head.

Something which you, I, and everyone else would call "Tuesday", of course.

[Eric Thelin]

It is good to hear that you think there is a future for Hamcrest. I might be able to contribute some work to the Java Hamcrest project as part of my professional work since we have begun discussions on open sourcing some of the matchers developed in house. However, it is too early to know if that project will fly.

Are there any threads discussing the development of Hamcrest for Java 8?

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[Henrik Horneber]

I'm interested in helping out as well. Not sure I can contribute much in terms of ideas, but I'd be happy to review and implement. 

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[Steve Freeman]

OK. For our volunteers, I know Colin is in London. Where is everyone else?

S

[Henrik Horneber]

Hannover, Germany 

Am 05.10.2017 11:55 AM schrieb "Steve Freeman" <st...@m3p.co.uk>:

OK. For our volunteers, I know Colin is in London. Where is everyone else?

S

[Eric Thelin]

Gothenburg, Sweden

Eric

Den 5 okt. 2017 11:55 skrev "Steve Freeman" <st...@m3p.co.uk>:

OK. For our volunteers, I know Colin is in London. Where is everyone else?

S

[Steve Freeman]

Ok people, how about we start the discussion?

I'm not sure how best to proceed, I think I'd prefer a call given we're all in Europe.
Do we prefer office hours or evening?

For evening, I propose Nov 14th. Otherwise things are more flexible.

S

[James Spagnola]

Hi,

I'm a big fan of hamcrest. Were there any notes from the meeting? I'd be willing to donate time for implementation if that's needed.

Thanks
Jim

[Colin Vipurs]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I totally forgot to let Steve know I could make it, so I don't know if any meeting actually happened

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[Steve Freeman]

Nothing happened. Probably best to do this asynchronously. Slack/Trello/other?

S

> On 20 Nov 2017, at 10:47, Colin Vipurs <zodi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I can't speak for anyone else, but I totally forgot to let Steve know I could make it, so I don't know if any meeting actually happened
>
> On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 5:45 PM, James Spagnola <jamests...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm a big fan of hamcrest. Were there any notes from the meeting? I'd be willing to donate time for implementation if that's needed.
>
> Thanks
> Jim
>
> On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 2:26:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Freeman wrote:
> Ok people, how about we start the discussion?
>
> I'm not sure how best to proceed, I think I'd prefer a call given we're all in Europe.
> Do we prefer office hours or evening?
>
> For evening, I propose Nov 14th. Otherwise things are more flexible.
>
> S
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hamcrest-jav...@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to hamcre...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/hamcrest-java.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
>
> --
> Maybe she awoke to see the roommate's boyfriend swinging from the chandelier wearing a boar's head.
>
> Something which you, I, and everyone else would call "Tuesday", of course.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

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[Colin Vipurs]

Slack works well for me.

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:50 AM, Steve Freeman <st...@m3p.co.uk> wrote:

Nothing happened. Probably best to do this asynchronously. Slack/Trello/other?

S

> On 20 Nov 2017, at 10:47, Colin Vipurs <zodi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I can't speak for anyone else, but I totally forgot to let Steve know I could make it, so I don't know if any meeting actually happened
>
> On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 5:45 PM, James Spagnola <jamests...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm a big fan of hamcrest. Were there any notes from the meeting? I'd be willing to donate time for implementation if that's needed.
>
> Thanks
> Jim
>
> On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 2:26:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Freeman wrote:
> Ok people, how about we start the discussion?
>
> I'm not sure how best to proceed, I think I'd prefer a call given we're all in Europe.
> Do we prefer office hours or evening?
>
> For evening, I propose Nov 14th. Otherwise things are more flexible.
>
> S
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hamcrest-java+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to hamcre...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/hamcrest-java.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
>
> --
> Maybe she awoke to see the roommate's boyfriend swinging from the chandelier wearing a boar's head.
>
> Something which you, I, and everyone else would call "Tuesday", of course.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hamcrest-java+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

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[Eric Thelin]

Slack works for me.

Eric

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[Steve Freeman]

https://join.slack.com/t/java-hamcrest/shared_invite/enQtMjc0MzQ5MTM5Mjk2LTU3ODkxNDY5NWUzZGQ2MDRlNDhiZmM5MzQxMGI4OGU5MTM0OTI5YTM0ZDdjNjIxNWExZTcyMGVjODU2YTQ1YzQ

S

> On 20 Nov 2017, at 10:57, Eric Thelin <eric.h....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Slack works for me.
>
> Eric
>
> Den 20 nov. 2017 11:54 skrev "Colin Vipurs" <zodi...@gmail.com>:
> Slack works well for me.
>
> On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:50 AM, Steve Freeman <st...@m3p.co.uk> wrote:
> Nothing happened. Probably best to do this asynchronously. Slack/Trello/other?
>
> S
>
> > On 20 Nov 2017, at 10:47, Colin Vipurs <zodi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can't speak for anyone else, but I totally forgot to let Steve know I could make it, so I don't know if any meeting actually happened
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 5:45 PM, James Spagnola <jamests...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm a big fan of hamcrest. Were there any notes from the meeting? I'd be willing to donate time for implementation if that's needed.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Jim
> >
> > On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 2:26:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Freeman wrote:
> > Ok people, how about we start the discussion?
> >
> > I'm not sure how best to proceed, I think I'd prefer a call given we're all in Europe.
> > Do we prefer office hours or evening?
> >
> > For evening, I propose Nov 14th. Otherwise things are more flexible.
> >
> > S
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hamcrest-jav...@googlegroups.com.

> > To post to this group, send email to hamcre...@googlegroups.com.
> > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/hamcrest-java.
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Maybe she awoke to see the roommate's boyfriend swinging from the chandelier wearing a boar's head.
> >
> > Something which you, I, and everyone else would call "Tuesday", of course.
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hamcrest-jav...@googlegroups.com.

> > To post to this group, send email to hamcre...@googlegroups.com.
> > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/hamcrest-java.
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hamcrest Java Users" group.

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>
>
>
> --
> Maybe she awoke to see the roommate's boyfriend swinging from the chandelier wearing a boar's head.
>
> Something which you, I, and everyone else would call "Tuesday", of course.
>
> --
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[John Patrick]

Did the slack group get started? As just tried to join.

Like many comments above, I use assertThat and hamcrest matchers extensively in every project for the past +5 years.

With Java 9 modules I would like to assist getting a 1.3.1 or 1.4 release out that supports Automatic-Module-Name, so many down stream projects can also start moving over to modules.

Then also look at getting a fully working modules version working.

Cheers,

John

[Steve Freeman]

The slack group did start, but didn't really go anywhere.

OK. How about this? I've created a new issue label called "Hamcrest Future".

We start writing issues that are proposals for what needs to happen to Hamcrest to be revived for the next generation.

Modules would be one thing.
What would a Java 8+ version look like (I have a couple of theories)
Which integrations do we need to think about
When do we drop Java 7 (I think not yet, unfortunately)
What about our Android users?
etc.

S