HUGE ! GXT4.0 is available under GPL !

[Olivier Sarrat]

Hi everyone,

Thanks to Alex Anderson (@alxndrsn), current general external evaluation code reviewer, he found on the following URL that GXT2.3.1 is not actually the latest GXT version released under GPL license !
https://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Cgxt

After he reports this information to me, I've searched further, and I have found that we can actually download GXT4.0.0 under GPL !
You can dowload it from the following page, after providing your email address in the form on the right side:
https://www.sencha.com/legal/GPL/

So according to Sencha documentation on GXT/GWT versions, the road to be up-to-date with GWT2.8 is no more blocked because of GXT.
We can find some information about that migration here: http://docs-devel.sencha.com/gxt/4.x/guides/getting_started/migration/MigrationGWT28.html
It won't be a 2 minutes tasks, but it is definetly a project we have to put soon in our roadmap.

Guys, that's very good news for the future of our project !

Best,

Olivier.

--

Olivier Sarrat
Ingénieur Systèmes d'Information / Information System Engineer

>>Sigmah (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+)
Animateur du projet / project facilitator

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[Thomas Broyer]

Le jeudi 8 juin 2017 17:56:20 UTC+2, osarrat.urd a écrit :

Hi everyone,

Thanks to Alex Anderson (@alxndrsn), current general external evaluation code reviewer, he found on the following URL that GXT2.3.1 is not actually the latest GXT version released under GPL license !
https://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Cgxt

After he reports this information to me, I've searched further, and I have found that we can actually download GXT4.0.0 under GPL !
You can dowload it from the following page, after providing your email address in the form on the right side:
https://www.sencha.com/legal/GPL/

Also available from their Maven repository: https://maven.sencha.com/repo/webapp/browserepo.html?2&pathId=gxt-gpl-release:com/sencha/gxt/gxt/4.0.0

https://docs.sencha.com/gxt/4.x/guides/getting_started/maven/Maven.html (but not Central, contrary to what their docs say)

<repository>

<id>Sencha Maven Repository</id>

<name>Sencha Maven Repository-releases</name>

<url>https://maven.sencha.com/repo/gxt-gpl-release</url>

</repository>

 

So according to Sencha documentation on GXT/GWT versions, the road to be up-to-date with GWT2.8 is no more blocked because of GXT.
We can find some information about that migration here: http://docs-devel.sencha.com/gxt/4.x/guides/getting_started/migration/MigrationGWT28.html
It won't be a 2 minutes tasks, but it is definetly a project we have to put soon in our roadmap.

The biggest hurdle would actually be to migrate from com.extjs.gxt to com.sencha.gxt, i.e. from 2.x to 3.x: http://docs-devel.sencha.com/gxt/4.x/guides/getting_started/migration/Migration2to3.html

Fortunately, GXT 3 supports GWT 2.4 too so migration can be incremental, using both GXT 2 and GXT 3 at the same time for some time.

Then it should (hopefully) be easier to upgrade from 3.x to 4.x.

BTW, GXT 2.3.1a was released in 2014 and would have allowed an upgrade to GWT 2.6 already (and super dev mode !)

Guys, that's very good news for the future of our project !

What's worrying though (for the longer term) is that GXT 5 development has stopped: https://plus.google.com/+BrandonDonnelson/posts/J4aFNdLMaGq

Note also that there are 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 (maybe 4.0.3 now too) commercially-supported releases, but no GPL update since 4.0.0, released one year ago already; and 4.0.0 is not without bugs (e.g. https://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?307657-XElement-isOrHasChild(XElement), found from https://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?335043-Is-GXT-4-0-1-available-under-GPL).

This means that there possibly (probably?) won't be any more fix to the GPL'd GXT before a long time.

Just sayin'

[osarrat.urd]

Hi,

Thanks Thomas for those very valuable feedbacks.

There are two issues linked with the current old version of GXT:

- major issue: we believed ourselves stuck forever with and old version of GWT because of a lack of release of GPL version of GXT higher than 2.3.1

- minor issue: upgrading GXT would be a solution to modernize Sigmah GUI which is a major expectations from our users

Potentially, we can work half-way: upgrade GXT up to a GXT 3.* stable version (more stable than GXT4.0) compatible with latest GWT v2.8.1 , and revise the GUI while continuing to isolate as much as possible the GXT part of the application with potentially trial to ged completely rid of GXT.

Best,

Olivier.