Blogging Roller

I just forked Roller on Github.

The new project is called Rollarcus and is mostly just an experiment and, I hope, a learning experience. I've got some ideas about stripping Roller down to it's core and making it more fun and easy to develop and deploy. We'll see how far I get.

In case you don't already know, an arcus cloud is a low, horizontal cloud formation.

UPDATE: The most significant of the changes that I made in Rollarcus have been applied by to Apache Roller and today (August 18, 2013) I removed the Rollarcus repository from Github.

I just upgraded this site to Roller 5.1-dev, Subversion rev 1175172. This unreleased version of Roller includes new mobile theming capability (mentioned in my previous post), allowing a theme to define both a standard and a "mobile" version of each weblog page. I haven't added mobile pages for my blog yet, but that is what I plan to do next.

This is the fourth in my series of Web Integration Patterns. Check out the intro at this URL http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/entry/web_integration_patterns

Synopsis

Enhance links shown in HTML pages so that users can hover, mouse-over, or use some other gesture, to view a preview of the resource at the other end of the link.

Motivations

• Make it convenient for a user to get information about a link but without having to navigate to the link and without having to leave the current web page in the browser.
• Make applications appear to be part of one integrated whole by enabling them to delegate to each other's user interfaces for preview display.

I've been working on the OSLC Core specification for about 1.5 years now as workgroup lead, and OSLC fits squarely under the "open web technologies" and Web Integration Patterns topics of this blog, so I'm blogging this happy news.

Here's the announcement From the OSLC Core Workgroup mailing list:

From: Dave Johnson
To: oslc-core (a) open-services.net, community (a) open-services.net
Subject: OSLC Core v2 specification now FINAL

Today [1], I'm very happy to announce that the OSLC Core v2
specification is FINAL.

The OSLC Core v2 specification [2] defines a set of REST and Linked
Data-based patterns, resources and protocols for integration of application 
and product lifecycle resources (ALM and PLM). It's designed to be the
foundation for all other OSLC domain specifications and there are now
three final OSLC specifications that are based on the Core, those
being the OSLC Change Management (CM) [3], OSLC Quality Management
(QM) [4] and OSLC Requirements Management (RM) [5] specs.

I'd like to thank all of the members of the OSLC Core Workgroup and
community for their hard work, critical thinking and ability to work
together in such a productive and pleasant way. Also, special thanks
to those OSLC domain workgroups who rebased their work on the Core and
development teams that provided excellent feedback along the way.

Thanks,
- Dave

--
David M. Johnson
OSLC Core Workgroup Lead
IBM Rational Software


[1] Move to final was proposed last week, along with a small set of
changes which have since been applied to the specification. 
[2] OslcCoreSpecification
[3] CmSpecificationV2
[4] QmSpecificationV2
[5] RmSpecificationV2

I really do have another Web Integration Patterns post on the way shortly, so stay tuned.

I'll be resuming my Web Integration Patterns blog series this week, now that I have some "free" time again. It's been a busy Spring at work and at home, especially during April and May. My early mornings, evenings and weekends were consumed by half-marathon training, (and the Apache Roller 5.0 release, more about that later).

As for the half-marathon, it went very well. I really enjoyed training and running with my oldest son. The race was today and we're both pretty happy with our results, which you can see below.

13th Annual Inside-Out Sports Classic - Half-Marathon

Place Bib  Name                    S Ag City             St Chiptim Guntime Pace  
===== ==== ======================= = == ================ == ======= ======= ===== 
  247  308 ALEX JOHNSON            M 14 RALEIGH          NC 1:59:10 1:59:18  9:06
  154  309 DAVE JOHNSON            M 47 RALEIGH          NC 1:50:34 1:50:43  8:27 

The race course is wonderful and runs through Umstead park on the small-grain gravel bridle trails there. Here's the route map I made on dailymile.com (check out the Elevation Profile, it's a hilly one).

This is the third in my series of Web Integration Patterns. Check out the intro at this URL http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/entry/web_integration_patterns

Synopsis

Enable easier integration and better search across integrated web applications and sites by using standard mechanisms (e.g. Microformats, RDFa) to embed property values in HTML pages.

This is the second in my series of Web Integration Patterns. Check out the intro at this URL http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/entry/web_integration_patterns

Synopsis

Make separate web sites and applications appear to be one by using common user interface elements for navigation.

In my previous post, I promised to write a blog series on Web Integration Patterns. This post explains the concept and a bit about how I plan to write about it.

What I’m calling Web Integration Patterns are techniques for integrating software systems, web applications and web sites using the common technologies of the web. These patterns build on HTTP, HTML, JavaScript and sometimes JSON, RDF and XML to provide ways to integrate software systems and include both programmatic approaches and user interface integrations.

I’ve been meaning to write on this topic for a some time and to explain how I’ve gone from being an advocate of RSS/Atom feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol and things bloggy to being a proponent of Linked Data (video), Semantic Web, RDF and other things that I previously considered to be nuisances. I've also got a new topic and blog series to announce, so here goes.

In my quest to make Roller work on Java EE 6, the next server that I tackled was JBoss 6. In this blog I'll describe how I approached the problem what I learned along the way.

Tested with Hibernate JPA

Roller uses JPA for database storage and specifically the Apache OpenJPA implementation. I knew that JBoss uses the Hibernate JPA implementation and I suspected that there would be JPA portability problems, so I decided to run Roller's JUnit tests against Hibernate JPA. There were many test failures and fortunately, the failures were easy to fix.

In my quest to make Roller work on Java EE 6, the first server that I decided to tackle was Glassfish 3. In this blog I'll describe how I approached the problem and what I learned along the way.

Tested with EclipseLink JPA

Roller uses JPA for persistence and specifically the Apache OpenJPA implementation. I knew that GlassFish uses the EclipseLink JPA implementation and I suspected that there would be JPA portability problems, so I decided to run Roller's JUnit tests against EclipseLink JPA. I wanted to find and fix those problems before even touching GlassFish. The tests ran and there were many JPA related failures and errors, most due to differences in the way that EclipseLink handles bi-directional relationships and the use of unmanaged objects.

It's hard to believe, but I've been dorking around with Roller, the blog software that powers this site, for almost 10 years now. I started in summer 2001. In the past couple of years, I've had a lot less time to work on Roller. I devoted some of that time to mentoring student developers, which was fun and rewarding. I also spent time making Roller more consumable for developers by making it easier to build, run and deploy to modern Java app servers, which was not really fun but was definitely educational, bloggable even.

On the last day of 2010, I made available the third release candidate for Apache Roller 5.0. The main difference between this new candidate and the previous one is that the new RC3 runs on Java EE 6 servers: Glassfish 3, JBoss 6 and Websphere 8 (currently in beta). Making this happen took a lot more work than I expected and I'll blog about that over the next couple of weeks as it is an interesting case study in Java EE 6 portability.

Here's the announcement:

Apache Roller 5.0 Release Candidate RC3 is now available for testing.
Note that this is NOT a release of the Apache Software Foundation or
anybody else; this release candidate is for testing purposes only and
not recommended for production.

   What's new in Roller 5.0:
   https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/What's+new+in+Roller+5.0

   Change list (issues resolved since 4.0)
   http://bit.ly/gAhDWR

   Issues resolved since last release candidate (RC3)
   http://bit.ly/dZ27Nx

   Signed binary and source files. Also, documentation in PDF form
   http://people.apache.org/~snoopdave/apache-roller-5.0/

The biggest change in RC3 is the new support for Java EE 6 application
servers: Glassfish 3, JBoss 6 and Websphere 8 (beta). I've been able
to verify that Roller runs on all of those servers, and I updated the
installation guide to explain in detail how you install on Glassfish,
JBoss and WebSphere.

If you would like to help out then please test RC3, discuss the
problems you encounter here and file specific bugs with steps to
reproduce in the Roller JIRA bug tracking system.

Thanks,
Dave

A couple of weeks ago, I made a second release candidate available for Apache Roller 5.0. Here's the announcement (also available at http://s.apache.org/apacheroller50rc2):

Apache Roller 5.0 Release Candidate RC2 is now available for testing. 
Note that this is NOT a release of the Apache Software Foundation or 
anybody else; this release candidate is for testing purposes only and 
not recommended for production.

   What's new in Roller 5.0:
   https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/What's+new+in+Roller+5.0

   Roller 5.0 JIRA change list:
   https://issues.apache.org/jira/sec ... sion=12313828

   Signed binary and source files
   http://people.apache.org/~snoopdave/apache-roller-5.0/

   Issues resolved since RC1:
   http://bit.ly/9eWjJk

If you would like to help out then please test RC2, discuss 
the problems you encounter here and file specific bugs with steps to
reproduce in the Roller JIRA bug tracking system.

I'm running RC2 on this site and it seems to be holding up just fine so far.

Ceki Gülcü: Instead of trying to learn from past failures which open discussion is supposed to encourage, Apache forges on in the path of egalitarianism. As time passes, I see attempts at institutionalizing egalitarianism instead of recognizing its inherent injustice. If egalitarianism is really at the core of the Apache way as an absolute value, then the Apache way sucks. Yay!

While the one person one vote principle applies to a democracy in order to run a country for the benefit of all, the one person one vote principle is ill-suited in a purported meritocracy the size of Apache. If it must be "one developer one vote", then the word meritocracy cannot be honestly ascribed to Apache.

Very interesting discussion and comments on the dynamics of meritocracy at the Apache Software Foundation from Ceki Gülcü.

Janne Jalkanen: We are now beginning a whole new era with becoming an Apache project and JSPWiki v3, which will signal the first major overhaul of the entire software since v2.0 in 2002. We've got a bunch of good committers (with a new one added this weekend - welcome, Florian!) and a bunch of pretty exciting things we want to do.

I'm so happy to see JSPWiki thrive at Apache, even in the incubator. You may remember that I wrote to Janne back in Summer 2007 and suggested the move, and I've crowed about it before, but Craig Russell is the one who stepped up to mentor the project and, from what I've seen, he's doing a great job.

Congratulations to the Apache Abdera team, who've just graduated to full Apache top level project status. The don't have the new site at abdera.apache.org up yet and they're still not quite at 1.0 yet, but this is a major milestone. They've got the best Atom format and protocol toolkit around, in my opinion.

via Garett and James.

If you want the lowdown on what's going on with Roller community health, ongoing work and upcoming releases then check out the Apache Roller August 2008 Board Report.