New feature (lock/unlock) + mavenized version on Github

[Francois Marot]

Hi all,

I just emailed to Lilian Chamontin (previous VLDocking lead) who suggested me to post here, as it may in particular be of interest for Andrew the current maintainer.
So I've just forket (a "friendly" fork ;) ) VLDocking on Github and added a feature that enable to lock/unlock the Dockables (they can't be moved when locked and have a little more space to be displayed). I've also created a branch where Maven is used to build the lib.

Here are the branches:
- import VLDocking "as is" from the official SVN: https://github.com/fmarot/vldocking/tree/master
- branch where I added my lock/unlock feature: https://github.com/fmarot/vldocking/tree/lockUnlock-feature
- branch where I replaced ANT by Maven (I'm a Maven fan) and added the little demo as in the start of the wiki tutorial: https://github.com/fmarot/vldocking/tree/maven-feature

I can't guarantee anything regarding the compatibility of my devs with the classic VLDocking but they are very limited in size and should not be hard to fix if they break anything. At least, It works well for the proof of concept I set up in my company. Do not hesitate to ping me back if interested in what I did or improving it, I can help.

Regards

François Marot

[Andrew Carlson]

Hey François,

This post will serve as a thank you & an update.

I'm glad you took the time to post this, I responded to you via twitter as well.

I know I haven't been updating VLDocking lately, but luckily there are no fatal bugs that I know of.

Within the next few weeks I will be releasing an update with a few new features & bug fixes.

But also I will be moving the project to bitbucket & other Atlassian products that have been donated to us.

I will most likely not be switching to Maven sadly, ANT is just what I know.

I'm hoping with being on being on bitbucket will help give the community an easier way of pushing code into the project.

When I make this move, it would be great if you wanted to help with anything that you can.

Thanks again,

Drew Carlson

[Francois Marot]

Hi Andrew,


that's good news to know you are planning to make the project evolve and give a new life to it !
I may be able to help a little ;)

First things first, let's talk about Maven. I really believe that it's difficult for a library to be taken seriously by companies if they are not on Maven central: integration in builds is difficult, keeping up to date is difficult etc... What is required in order tohave a Maven build is just moving source files in their standard Maven location. No change in source code. AND you can keep an ANT build file for those interested, it's just a matter of changing the paths. I did a rapid integration of Maven in my github repo based on my modified version, but if you're interested I can add it (or tell you exactly how to do it) to your official version.

Then the locking / unlocking feature. Would you be interested in integrating it ? If yes, I could work on a much cleaner integration (right now, I just integrated it basically to fullfill my own need, but it's certainly not good for an official integration).

Last, are you aware of Valkyrie RCP ? I've just discovered that this project seems active and uses VLDocking (don't know which version though, I haven't looked a lot for now) .

Regards

Francois

[Lilian Chamontin]

Hi,

Never heard of this RCP before. In the past there also has been a spring RCP using vldocking, but I don't know if if had users or not. 

Valkyrie seems to be using vldocking 2.1.4 which is a bit outdated and still with my own vldolutions package naming. 

Regards and keep up the good work !

Lilian

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[Francois Marot]

In fact Valkyrie RCP seems to be an active fork of the old Spring RCP.
Cheers !

François

[Andrew Carlson]

Hey Guys,

Glad to hear from you guys! First, yes I have heard of Valkyrie RCP.  I have not used it but I have attempted to contact them and see if they are interested in updated versions as I have also noticed their use of an outdated version.

I know a little about Maven but have never used it in my projects as I generally don't use a lot of libraries.  But with that said I would love to have you help me get a Maven branch setup as you sound like you have experience with it.

In regards to the locking/unlocking feature, it sounds very useful and would be happy if we could put it into the official repo/builds.

Lilian, if you have any thoughts on what we are doing & planning, I would love to hear from you.

Cheers Guys,

Drew

[Andrew Carlson]

Also, I would like to hear if you guys have any thoughts on the use of the Atlassian software suite.  I have used their software in many companies and have had many enterprise projects moved to them.

[Lilian Chamontin]

About Maven : I'm fine with it, I also use it a lot nowadays instead of Ant, which wasn't the case when I created VLDocking 9 (!) years ago. Maven is a usefull toolkit especially when your project relies on many external libraries (which could be the case for VLDocking when embedded inside a larger Swing project). I agree with François in that it could help improving adoption of our framework (or at least avoiding early rejections). I should have migrated VLDocking to it a while back, but never took the time to do so.

About Atlassian, I've also used it a lot in "agile projects" (jira + greenhopper mostly) , I'm not sure it's worth the effort (as long as activity level remains rather low for the project) but if more contributors (or more bugs) were expected, we could probably benefit from using it. These kind of tools have more and more value as your team size (or user base) increases. For the moment, I think any bug tracker will do the work and the google group is also a simple and efficient way to communicate.

I also love Git and would back you up if you wanted a definitive switch from svn to it.

Lilian

[Andrew Carlson]

Thanks Lilian, JIRA was donated so we will have it for as long as we want it.  My main goal for these changes and future updates is to increase usage and hopefully create a more active community.  But with that said we definitely do not have to make a big push with it now.  I figured for now it would work for historical purposes and organization as apposed to have bug threads strewing about the Google Group.

If François wants to help me with Maven I would be happy to make that transition, especially with the both of you recommending it.

Lilian, are you OK with using BitBucket for the GIT hosting? I already have it setup and I can add You(and François if you both want) as Admins/Commiters.

I have an update to VLDocking with a bug fix and two new features. Would it be a problem if we wait till I iron those out and push them before we move on Maven?

Here is the GIT link if you need it https://bitbucket.org/Arrow/vldocking

Drew

[Francois Marot]

Hi Andrew, Lilian,

regarding Maven, I would be glad to help. Especially as:
- it does not forbid to keep a compatible ANT build file, at least at the start, just a few modifications should be needed in the build.xml
- it is very easy to do (generating a single jar is a thing Maven is very good at, there is, in fact nearly nothing to do)
Andrew, just tell me when your code is a little stable and which version I can use: i'll do a script to move the files around in their Maven location and provide you the pom.xml file

I would be glad to have the commiter rights on the repository, but I understand if you want to "test" me a little before (you don't give your house keys to strangers, do you ?! ;) )

Hope to help you soon

Regards

Francois

[Francois Marot]

And also, I forgot:
I've only used JIRA from Atlassian and it was a great tool. I'm not as categorical as before: maybe using Atlassian's tool instead of Google groups would not be such a bad things. I don't know.
When using other open source projects not using Google groups, if I have to participate in the discussion, I'm always like "oh no I have to create yet another login/password" to participate... I don't know if it is the case with Atlassian's tools...

Regards