BeanShell Status and Direction...

I just wanted to update everyone on what's been happening lately with BeanShell
and to address some of the questions that have come up recently.  Specifically:

1) Status
2) Opening up development to more committers.
3) JSR, Groovy, ec.

1) Since the 2.0b1 we have been in a bit of a lull since I became involved
in JSR-223, the javax.scripting API with Sun.  I have been working very hard to
insure that BeanShell is well represented there and that the new API will allow
generalized Java scripting in a way that allows the kinds of features found in
BeanShell to be exposed in a standard way. 

2) As has been the case in the past, my personal time constraints have limited
updates and changes to BeanShell.  I recognize that this is not healthy.
Although I have historically been more concerned with keeping BeanShell on a
certain, minimalist, track than in driving it forward, I believe now that it is
time to truly open up development.

To that end I am immediately adding several long time BeanShell developers as
CVS committers on sourceforge.  We will coordinate our activities of course,
but no longer will basic updates block on me.  Many of you know Daniel Leuck
and Slava Pestov.  Both are top notch developers and have a long history with
the BeanShell project.  We all know and appreciate the many others who 
are active contributers and we expect to bring in more people over time,
based on their interest and availability.

The latest code (2.0b1) is now in CVS and ready to go.

3) I was as surprised as anybody at the Groovy JSR, especially since I am
working with JSR-223 and was hoping to use it as a path towards a
BeanShell-like "native Java" scripting language proposal when our work was
done.  The Groovy JSR definitely muddies the waters for this.   

I must admit that I am a bit stumped at the sudden popularity of Groovy.  Many
of the "advanced" features that it adds are things that would be very easy to
add to BeanShell, but just don't seem that important to me.  One of the
things that Daniel is going to do is to try out some new features.  We will
post another proposal and get feedback from the list soon.

Stay tuned for further developments ;)


Thanks,
Pat Niemeyer


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