If you are around Milan join us it will be a lot of fun. For your convenience I have pasted here the full agenda, but don’t forget to visit the official group and sign in for partecipation.

9.30: Welcome coffee
9.45: Welcome and first infos about JBUG
10.15: JBoss AS7
11.00: Coffee Break
11.15: JBoss AS7 and webservices
12.00: JBoss in cloud with OpenShift
12.45: Closing
13.00: luch
14:00: Hacking AS7

And don’t miss the hacking party we will have in the afternoon: Alessio and me will be in the public area of Red Hat office working on JBoss AS7, and would be cool to have you hacking with us. Don’t leave your laptop at home, join the community and send your first patch in that afternoon.

And now, for our italian reader, for this italian event…the post in italian language:

Alessio ed io faremo due presentazioni su AS7 durante il primo meeting del JBUG di Milano il prossimo 20 Settembre.

Se passte da Milano, non perdetevi l’evento, ci divertiremo. Per vostra comodità riporto qui l’agenda definitiva dell’incontro, ma non scordatevi di fare un giro sul gruppo ufficiale del JBUG ed iscrivetevi all’evento mandando la mail come indicato in uno dei messaggi.

9.30: Welcome coffee
9.45: Benvenuto e prime informazioni sul JBUG
10.15: JBoss AS7
11.00: Coffee Break
11.15: JBoss AS7 e i webservices
12.00: JBoss in cloud con OpenShift
12.45: Closing
13.00: Pranzo a buffet
14:00: Sviluppo di AS7

E mi raccomando, non perdetevi l’hacking su AS7 nel pomeriggio. Io ed Alessio ci fermeremo in area pubblica dell’ufficio Red Hat di Milano a lavorare su JBoss AS7. E sarebbe bello sviluppare insieme a voi. Non dimenticatevi il computer , partecipate alla community mandando il pomeriggio stesso la vostra prima patch

See you there!

Ci vediamo li!

So, what’s up with JBossWS in 2010 ? The project has gone through two major sets of releases. The 3.3.x series kind of finalized the JBossWS move to having the Apache CXF based stack as its preferred one, installed by default on JBoss Application server. Integrating a third-party piece of software is always something non-trivial. And even if the overall quality of what we consume (and contribute to, of course) from Apache is definitely very high, that’s simply not enough when it comes to integrating: many issues were discovered, dealt with and solved… any many are probably still to come.

The type of development you end up doing when providing a solution like JBossWS-CXF is pretty much different from what you are on when developing stuff from scratch. I kind of expected that to be honest. It’s not that unusual to spend days on looking for the best way of re-using / integrating already existing (or partially available) functionalities, trying to figure out an elegant solution for achieving the goal on JBoss side, while enriching the third-party side of the software in a way that makes sense regardless of JBoss needs. Sometime I think it’s like “plumbing”. For sure you need to go on constantly swapping your hats, the JBoss employee one and the Apache contributor one, in my case. And given we operate in an open source world here … you might even find yourself producing fully vendor agnostic solutions just for the sake of solving your own (JBoss here) problem.

Some might dislike this kind of work, thinking satisfaction can come only from creating your own solutions from scratch, feeling they’re your own babies. Others might appreciate the integration work, enjoying the  new challenges in this. To be honest, I think this is a really subjective feeling and you can find yourself excited by the achievements you reach in both cases. You should probably try both in any case.

Anyway, back to bringing Apache CXF in JBoss through JBossWS… implementing the JSR 109 requirements is a good example of integration. Apache CXF provides WS functionalities and successfully verifies those are compliant with the core JCP WS specifications (JSR 224 – JAXWS, for instance). However CXF of course does not care about all the details on how that’s supposed to work with a given application server according to the rest of the JavaEE specification, which JSR 109 is a good example of. In an ideal world the missing bits need to live in the integration project (JBossWS here)… In reality you end up coordinating different needs, reviewing and rationalizing stuff on both sides, to basically make the integration happen and be a success.

The second set of JBossWS 2010 releases has been the 3.4.x series. While the announcement is recent story, that was a multiple months effort from me and the rest of the team. We went through active collaboration on CXF (Apache contributor hat on ) to have it implement JAXWS 2.2 and make it pass the TCK certifaction testsuite for that. While on that, we implemented the proper integration for passing the corresponding ws modules of JavaEE 6 TCK on JBoss side (with *the* red hat on ). This all was done while directly targeting development snapshots of Apache CXF, hence with multiple moving targets (JBoss AS, Apache CXF, our own JBossWS integration layer and even the TCK which was not final yet) to track for potential regressions.

At the end of the year I’m quite satisfied by what we got. From a job point of view, I’m just waiting for Santa to come with a nice present… a final release of JBoss AS 6 (I sent him the jbossws maven artifacts to include in the box , he should have got them in time… despite the snow over north Italy these days).

OK, now it’s time to start relaxing a bit, to enjoy the Christmas spirit…  then I’ll come back with new intentions for the next year, both directly related to JBossWS and not…

Merry X-mas and happy new year!

Well, I’ve been very very busy in last months driving (or at least help a lot to drive) a big change in my former company, leading a key project with more than fifty programmers involved distributed in various team, with a lot of biz analysts and so on. But it’s another story I’ll probably tell you at some point. But the important word in last sentence is former. Yep, who is following me on twitter (or have recently read about_us page or even is linked with me on linkedin) knows I’ve joined  Red Hat as Principal Software Engineer in JBoss division. That’s a cool interesting job (I’m working on IronJacamar project and AS7 development), but it’s making me very busy.

Anyway, back to the title of this post. It’s matter of fact that is very hard to keep alive open source projects in spare time. And maybe in last months some people thought that Wise is an almost dead project, and TestedBy a totally dead one. In fact we had very few time to  work on Wise and also on TestedBy for all the reasons stated above. But they aren’t dead and we are getting back on them (check last week commits for both!).

In particular Alessio is working on Wise to full support JBossWS-CXF container, while I’m planning to cleanup ESB module to support the last version (maybe after Alessio’s work). After that we will work on our object mapping subsystem needed to continue the implementation of our WebUI.

I’m refining in the mean time samples of TestedBy to make possible to release the first version of the project. BTW very probably we will leave “TestedBy” name and we will launch the first release of the project with a new cool name. I’ll keep you post here.

As said keeping open source project alive in spare time isn’t easy, and sometime it’s very very hard specially if contributors are very few and very busy. Would you be part of a cool open source project, with all the beauty of that? We would need in particular contributions for TestedBy in Eclipse area, but if you would land an hand in other area and/or in Wise we are fine with that too. Please contact us, your help could make the difference!

Last but not least Wise have a new very very cool logo. Thanks to Red Hat Design team and in particular to Cheynne for that! No link here…it merits a dedicated post!

As said a lot of cool stuffs are coming…stay tuned.

All open source community code site have its pros and cons (I’ve tried a lot of them sourceforge, github, jboss.org, google code etc), and every one have some beautiful unique feature. But one of my most loved feature is definitively google code’s integration of issue tracker and version control. In a nutshell it permit to create, update and close issues just adding some keyword on your commit.

It’s great in general, but it’s really amazing if you are using a distributed Version Control. And I’m using git for local repository and git-svn to synchronize it with central subversion repository.
Imagine this situation: you are working with your laptop off-line (i.e into an air plane where also GSM connection isn’t available) and you find a bug or you have an idea for an enhancement. What do you do in this case? Of course take care of the bugged code, fix it, write a test for that and then commit it into your git local repository. What is the missing step in this work flow? Of course create an issue into your issue tracker system to keep community up to date, and don’t forget it if you can’t completely finish it now. At this point come very useful the google code feature permitting you to create, update, or fix an issue when you are committing a change.

There is only one problem with this integration: remember the structure the commit message have to fit and all (or at least the most useful) values you can assign to various fields. I’ve solved this problem creating 3 template for the commit messages and I use them with git. Using template during a git commit is very easy: just make a commit like this

git commit -a -t tempalteFile

Git will Use the contents of the given file as the initial version of the commit message. The editor is invoked and you can make subsequent changes. If a message is specified using the -m or -F options, this option has no effect.

Here you have my 3 template file:

NewIssue.tmpl

#commit comment here

#next line doesn't need any number. ssue number will be automaticaly assigned after commit
New issue
#A summary is always needed. Please complete next line
Summary:
#Uncomment the rigt Status
#Status: Accepted
#Status: Fixed
#Status: New
#Uncommet right Labels and/or add labels to the list (comma or space separate)
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-High
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Critical
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Medium
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Low
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-High

#Comment text for the issue tracker goes here

UpdateIssue.tmpl

#commit comment here

#Complete next line with issue number
Update issue
#summary is rarely updated. If you need that uncomment and complete next line
#Summary:
#Uncomment the new Status you would get your issue. No uncomment status will keep the previous status
#Status: Accepted
#Status: Fixed
#Status: New
#Uncommet Labels and/or add labels to the list (comma or space separate) if you want update/add Labels
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-High
#Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Critical
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Medium
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Low
#Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-High

#Comment text for the issue tracker goes here

FixIssue.tmpl

#commit comment here

#Complete next line with issue number
Fixes issue

#Comment text for the issue tracker goes here

The same thing should be possible also with svn and other SCM.

Hoping it could help some other people enjoying this google code feature developing open source code during their trips

Have fun!

It’s not that simple to achieve an active bi-directional collaboration, with both parties’ needs being considered, but this is working quite well now. For instance, read what Daniel Kulp (CXF lead) writes about the collaboration. Needless to say I like this, that’s a nice example of what open source can make possible.

I’m sorry for that but time is very very few. It is one of the reason I’m twitting more than blogging. Twitter require a lot lesser time than blogging. I’m loving it men! It make possible to write some notes without wasting a lot of time in a blog post and it’s very very effective in terms of feedbacks and information exchange.
But I’m not here to describe all the resons I’m loving twitter.
I’m here to say I have no time . A little counter sense wasting time in a blog post to say I haven’t time to waste . But counter senses are fun because drive us to think different, open the mind and ask our selves where is the real problem.
I have no time for what?
To realize my ideas. I have a lot of ideas (as all people have, I’m sure of that), but it seems I haven’t time to put them in practice. And it’s frustrating. But I decided t return to regular post some ideas here to don’t loose them.

Perhaps I’m not having a revulotionary ideas, I’m not saying E=mc2! But ideas are important per se and share ideas could be the key to give them a spin, an make them fly. Isn’t it the real spirit of open source movement? Open source isn’t IMHO a matter of software, but more generally is matter of ideas.

Innovation have a simple recipe: ideas +time to realize it. But innovation in a open source world could become ideas + some opportunity to realize and share them. One of my favourite blog is exactly this: enunciating ideas and realize them (Bob is sufficient lucky to have time itself to realize hi idea).
In the past I have some ideas became an open source project, and some stimulated some discussions and I’d like to implement it in near future as open source project (I haven’t yet got time, but I love too much TestedBy underlying idea, it is one of my first priority!).

Anyway I can’t switch off my brain just because I haven’t time to realize my ideas.
Could be more interesting and helpful for my curiosity to write down these ideas and share them for an open discussion. At least I’ll have take note of them to work on in some future, or maybe I’ll stimulate others’ ideas in virtuos circle. Let me remark one more time, that is the real underlying idea of open source.

Moreover I’m reading an interesting book “Pragmatic Thinking and Learning“. It say a lot of interesting things, but the one I’m totally sold out is that ideas will be lost if you leave it in a corner of your brain, it’s much better to write it down and eventually discuss it with someone. I would raise the bidding discussing my ideas not with someone, but virtually all

Stay tuned, I’m going to post much more regulary, with really brief post, perhaps someone could be interesting for you and you would like to discuss about it in a virtuous circle