News from January, 2007

We're working hard on AppFuse 2.0.  The good news is things are coming along really nicely. There's quite a few developers working on the project now and they've been a tremendous help. If I knew the move to Maven 2 would've inspired so much help, I would've done it a long time ago! We've got most of the archetypes created and we just need to work on documentation for the 2.0 release M1 release. As far as the roadmap is concerned, we've finished most of the code for an M2 release, but we still need to do documentation. I'm hoping to release M1 on Thursday of next week.

If you want to try it, you can checkout the Hello World with AppFuse 2.0 video. After that, feel free to take it for a test drive using the QuickStart Guide.

New features in AppFuse 2.0:

• Maven 2 Integration
• Upgraded WebWork to Struts 2
• JDK 5, JPA Annotations, JSP 2.0, Servlet 2.4
• JPA Support
• Generic CRUD backend
• Full Eclipse, IDEA and NetBeans support
• Fast startup and no deploy with Maven Jetty Plugin
• Testable on multiple appservers with Cargo and profiles

Speaking of goodies, I uploaded a bunch of AppFuse desktop backgrounds to Flickr. Thanks to Max Hays of Timberline Group for creating these.

Only 26 days left until the AppFuse 2.0 Release Party! Location TBD.

I'd like to set a few goals for releasing AppFuse 2.0. Here's what I'm currently thinking:

• M2 - January 11th (Thursday). This should be mostly me as it's mostly documentation that needs to be written. I'm skipping M1 since we already have the archetypes done.
• M3 - January 25th (Thursday). Since one will be tough because we need to get the code-generation stuff working in the plugin, as well as other goals we need. I should be able to clear my schedule to work on this, so we should be able to make it happen.
• Final - February 1st (Thursday). This should be mostly polishing, documentation and bug fixes.

All the issues for the various milestones are available as filters in JIRA. You can see them and subscribe to them on the front page:

http://issues.appfuse.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa

Of course, if show-stoppers come up, this schedule may slip - but I think it's good to set goals. Personally, I thrive on deadlines.

This is outdated. Look here: http://appfuse.org/display/APF/Event+Calendar or here http://issues.appfuse.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?

We've reached quite a milestone in the development in AppFuse 2.0. This is a release that we hope to use to flush out issues and help make AppFuse 2.0 a solid release. The major things missing from this release are code generation (AppGen) and web services (XFire) support. We hope to add both of these before the final release.

Release notes are below. Please see the QuickStart Guide to get started with this release.

Thanks to all the developers and users that have helped with this release!

AppFuse JIRA (73 issues)
T	Key	Summary	Status	Res
	APF-572	Rename Manager and BaseManager to UniversalManager and UniversalManagerImpl	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-568	Upgrade to Tapestry-Spring 1.0.0 and Tapestry-Flash 1.0.0	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-567	Upgrade to DbUnit Maven Plugin beta 1	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-564	Change appfuse-archetype-basic to be 4 separate archetypes for a better user experience	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-556	Remove readOnly from transaction attributes, so no transactions execute as readOnly	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-555	Upgrade to Hibernate 3.2.1 GA	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-554	Configure plugins so their documentation can be deployed to http://static.appfuse.org/plugins	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-553	Create skinny WARs (with no JARs in WEB-INF/lib) for deployment	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-551	Test to make sure AppFuse-dependent projects can modify all values in jdbc.properties	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-550	Cannot build appfuse-data-hibernate on Ubuntu linux	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-548	Resolve use of Apache Logger when using Maven execute command	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-542	CSS does not work correctly in IE 7	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-541	Fix the hibernate3-maven-plugin so it works as expected with AppFuse	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-537	Change BaseControllerTestCase to extend AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests for lazy-loading support	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-535	Create GenericManager that uses GenericDao	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-526	Add configuration settings to eclipse plugin in root pom.xml	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-525	Add configuration settings to idea plugin in root pom.xml	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-524	Change StartupListener so it doesn't extend Spring's ContextLoaderListener	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-519	hbm2ddl Database Generation	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-518	Problems with User Input form after validation error	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-516	appfuse-webwork-1.9.4 requires internet connection to initialize	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-506	APF-404 subtask: mainMenu.html improvements	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-503	APF-404 subtask: BasePage.java improvements	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-501	APF-404 subtask: Use of the @class attribute in .page files:	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-500	APF-404 subtask: File locations	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-499	APF-404 subtask: Naming Conventions	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-495	Move loginForm.jsp into login.jsp - simplification is good	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-493	Facelets doesn't allow locale switching like JSP does	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-489	Create Maven archetypes for creating new AppFuse projects	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-486	Class Address needs annotation @Embeddable instead of @Entity	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-485	db-unit run from maven does not disconnect at end of load - scripts to shutdown database will stall	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-482	Filtering issue with Hibernate properties	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-481	Replace GZipFilter with one from EhCache	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-478	Make test base classes available to dependent projects	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-472	UserSecurityAdvice not being applied to UserManager	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-469	AppConfig - Theme collides with Webwork themes	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-468	Missing UL tag around bullet list causes andreas01 style to break in IE6	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-467	Move web/pages/menu.jsp to web/common/menu.jsp	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-466	Migrate on-page javascript to scripts/global.js file	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-464	Integrate Ajax4JSF	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-463	Replace JSP with Facelets	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-456	Change to use Spring 2.0's form tag library	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-451	define class param in spring creator definition in dwr.xml	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-448	Upgrade to Canoo WebTest 1393 (a.k.a. 2.1)	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-447	Upgrade to Script.aculo.us 1.6.5	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-444	Upgrade to jMock 1.1.0	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-443	Upgrade to MyFaces 1.1.4	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-439	Upgrade to Spring 2.0	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-438	Upgrade to Acegi Security 1.0.2	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-434	Application Messages not cleared after logout.	Resolved	DUPLICATE
	APF-429	Bug in BaseControllerTestCase	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-428	Password not encrypted if validation fails when adding a new user	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-427	logout.jsp and JSF session's beans	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-426	Exception in LabelRenderer if "for" property is not set	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-425	Create Generic DAO for iBATIS that uses JDK 5 generics - use wherever possible	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-424	Create Generic DAO for Hibernate that uses JDK 5 generics - use wherever possible	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-421	Migrate from XDoclet to Annotations for Hibernate	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-418	Replace Dumbster with Wiser	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-416	Spring LabelTag doesn't change class to errorClass after validation error	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-411	proposal: french translation displaytag_fr.properties file	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-410	Fix for "could not initialize proxy - the owning Session was closed" in Tapestry version	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-345	Upgrade to Hibernate 3.2.ga	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-280	a better equals method	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-261	Service tests that are mock tests should go in org.appfuse.service.impl and integration tests in org.appfuse.service	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-246	Tables aren't created when running iBATIS on Postgres - need table creation scripts	Resolved	DUPLICATE
	APF-200	Integrate xdoclet code into tapestry/appgen that allows a user to tag their pojo and generate typed tapestry components	Resolved	WON'T FIX
	APF-181	Test and Fix AppFuse on Orion	Resolved	WON'T FIX
	APF-156	allow easy swapping between tomcat/jboss	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-140	Upgrading AppFuse	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-139	Make sure mail.smtp.auth is documented in "mailSender" bean	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-91	Auto synch of serialVersion Id on forms	Resolved	WON'T FIX
	APF-82	Improve Build Reporting Structure	Resolved	FIXED
	APF-58	LazyInitializationException in JUnit Tests (WEB)	Closed	WON'T FIX

One of the issues that has come up a fair amount with AppFuse and its web frameworks is what extension to use.

I still like *.html the best because it doesn't give away the underlying technology. Using *.htm seems like the best option after that. Since there were many suggestions on the mailing list, I figured it would be best to solve this with a poll. Please choose your preferred extension from the list below. If your preferred extension isn't listed here, please leave a comment and we'll add it. Of course, if there's enough folks that prefer *.html, we'll try and figure out a way to solve the issues that folks have seen with Dojo.

You'll need to create an account and login to vote. To do this, go to View > Account > Sign Up.

Update Monday, January 29th: It looks like most folks prefer *.html (as I do). Hopefully we can add a filter or something to keep the extension, as well as make Dojo work perfectly with AppFuse.

I was hoping to have M3 done last week. However, the previous week was a doozy (my company laid off everyone and shut its doors), so I lost a fair bit of time with that. Last week I was juggling interv