Re: Freemarker schedule related question

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 7:47:20 AM, Ing. Jan Novotný wrote:

> Hello,
>
>    is there any roadmap that would state where there could be 2.4
> stable out? I'd like to get advantage of new null handling behaviour. Thanks for the reply.

Ugh... all right, let's see, at least some of devels will see the
picture at least.

First, I have to clarify something regarding the version numbers...
Although you still see 2.4-pre1 on our page (again, guys, can I remove
that thing?), if that branch will be released ever at all, that will
be most probably 3.0. Now there is a plan to release a 2.4, but that's
basically 2.3 changed so that it complies with the GWE (for Google Web
Engine) (GWE doesn't comply with J2SE 1.3 or later, the target
platform of FreeMarker 2.3), which required non-backward compatible
changes (even if only minor ones) and hence it can't be called
2.3.<something> according to our version number policy.

As of null-handling... Attila hinted earlier that he could back-port
that into 2.4 (which is 2.3 GWE). And technically he could for sure...
however, as it turns out that it can't be done without *substantially*
breaking backward compatibility (at least as far as I see). Surely 2.4
can be non-compatible with 2.3 according the version policy, however,
since many will only switch to 2.4 to run their *existing*
applications on GWE, these really should be minor ones this time. So
null-handling can only go into, like, 2.5... UNLESS it becomes a
Configuration-level setting in 2.4: "null_aware", false by default. If
Attila thinks that that's not too big deal to implement, that would be
great. (And BTW if null_aware=true, then null could be a keyword; no
need for that ugly .null anywhere.) (Actually, this null_aware thing
would be desirable for one another reason... When we want to introduce
something non-BC and profound in version x.y.0, it should be already
in the wild with version x.(y-1).z, so people can start experimenting
with it and "migrate" long before it becomes active be default.)

Now, the whens... That's horrendously unpredictable here. But I
believe 2.4.0 (final) will be out within a few months. And if Attila
will agree with the null_aware setting thing, you will have
null-support that early. Or actually earlier... because in that case a
practically stable 2.4 that already has this optional null-support
will appear much earlier in the SVN for sure. AFAIR Attila already has
2.3 GWE + null-support on his computer, only null-support isn't
optional yet, and that's a problem for 2.4. But I don't know yet what
he will think about making that a config. option.

> Regards,
> Jan

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany


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