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Mach-II 1.9

Hot on the heels of the Mach-II 1.8 "Simplicity" final release, Team Mach-II is proud to announce the availability of Milestone 1 (M1) of the 1.9 "Integrity" release.

As we've mentioned a few times before, starting with Mach-II 1.9 we are moving to milestone releases in order to get fully completed features in your hands as soon as possible. This helps us better organize and complete the development tasks involved with the release, and our users can help us by testing the new features as they're completed instead of waiting for the full final release, or potentially having numerous partially completed features in nightly builds.

Mach-II 1.9 is code-named "Integrity" because one of the main focal points of this release is adding validation capabilities to the framework. An integral part of validation is internationalization, so i18n is another big piece of Mach-II 1.9. We've made great progress on these features and they'll be available in future milestone releases. You can read about some of our plans for i18n features on the Mach-II wiki.

In keeping with our smaller, faster release cycle, we started with some low-hanging fruit for Mach-II 1.9 M1, including:

• Boostrapper "loading page" option - #195
• Add 'prepend' attribute to the view-page command - #420
• Improvements to the logging package
  • Use for M2 logger output when on Open BD - #439
  • Allow for MachIILogger use IP list to show debugging output - #329
• Improvements to the HtmlHelperProperty
  • Add support for nested "inline" JS in asset packages - #469
  • Add option to add JS before HTML body in HtmlHelperProperty - #230
• Miscellaneous improvements
  • Add ability to use a module event as default event - #382
  • Add helper methods to ViewContext and BaseComponent for environment related functionality - #467

Grab the Mach-II 1.9 M1 zip now and help us by starting to incorporate new Mach-II features into your development cycle right when they're available.

As for our plans for future 1.9 milestone releases, we're a completely open book. You can read about all the milestone plans on our roadmap, and please let us know if you have feedback on any of the great features we have planned for 1.9. And we can't wait to start sharing our plans for 2.0.

As always, thanks for your support of Mach-II! Our users and community are what make Mach-II great, so we truly appreciate everything you do for Mach-II.

Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) Released

Team Mach-II is proud to announce the availability of the stable / gold version of Mach-II 1Simplicity (1.8).  Simplicity introduces numerous new features and also sets the stage for us to move forward to 1.9 code named "Integrity" and the big 2.0 release code named "Velocity".

New features and enhancements in Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) include:

• Form Tag Library with data binding
• View Tag Library
• Environment Property
• HTML Helper Property
• View Loaders
• Call-Method Command
• Enhanced Redirect Functionality
• Search Engine Friendly URL Enhancements including support for URL Routes
• Enhanced event-bean command

In addition to these "marquee" features, Mach-II 1.8 includes a ton of smaller improvements that will make building Mach-II applications even faster and easier than before, so make sure and check out the "What's New in Mach-II 1.8" page on the wiki for all the details.

Mach II CFObjective 2010 Pre-conference Training

Team Mach II is happy to present Pre-conference training on April 20-21, 2010 just before CFObjective 2010 in Minneapolis, MN!

Team Mach-II is offering a two-day pre-conference workshop that helps developers learn how to build rock-solid object-oriented CFML applications using the Mach-II framework. This workshop is ideal for CFML developers who want to take their development skills to the next level by using object-oriented techniques and the power of Mach-II.

This two-day workshop includes a total of 14 hours of training time, not including breaks and lunch.

We have made a number of improvements to the workshop since we first offered it two years ago at cf.Objective() 2008. The presentations have been streamlined in order to allow for maximum hands-on coding, and we dig into the latest features introduced in Mach-II 1.8 ("Simplicity") as well as new features in Mach-II 1.9 ("Integrity").

In addition, this year each participant is provided a lab computer with all software and hands-on labs pre-installed. At the end of the workshop all materials will be provided on a thumb drive so participants can take their work with them.

And the best news is that we have reduced the price of the workshop by 45%! This year the price tag is only $495, a whopping $400 less than what we charged two years ago. We are trying to make it as easy as possible for you to attend this workshop.

In additional, the team will also be organizing a meet-up for fans and users of Mach II one of the nights during the conference. Stay tune to this blog and the Mach II mailing list for more information.

Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) RC2 Released!

Team Mach-II is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Mach-II 1.8 RC2. Download Mach-II 1.8 RC2 now.  RC2 fixes a few user reported edge case issues.  After the RC2 public testing period, Mach-II Simplicity will be deemed gold and ready for a stable release.  Now it the time to test out 1.8.0 on your applications!

Mach-II 1.8 introduces numerous new features and also sets the stage for us to move forward to 1.9 code named "Integrity" and the big 2.0 release code named "Velocity".

New features and enhancements in Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) include:

• Form Tag Library with data binding
• View Tag Library
• Environment Property
• HTML Helper Property
• View Loaders
• Call-Method Command
• Enhanced Redirect Functionality
• Search Engine Friendly URL Enhancements including support for URL Routes
• Enhanced event-bean command

In addition to these "marquee" features, Mach-II 1.8 includes a ton of smaller improvements that will make building Mach-II applications even faster and easier than before, so make sure and check out the "What's New in Mach-II 1.8" page on the wiki for all the details.

Team Mach-II: Introducing Mike Rogers

Team Mach-II is glad to welcome our new member Mike Rogers to the team (see bio).  Below is a short interview we did with him.  We felt this would be a good way for the community to "virtually" meet him. We're really excited to work with Mike and feel he's a great asset to the Mach-II community.  Without further ado, on with the interview:

Tell us a little about who you are and what makes you tick...

The first question and it's the hardest. Who am I? I'm a marginally talented programmer from a small town in Indiana whose desire to write solid software has taken him through a dozen languages and countless frameworks only to settle on Mach-II. I'm driven by (as the great Larry Wall once said) a combination of Laziness, Hubris, and Impatience.

What was the first thing you ever did with a computer that made you proud of your accomplishment?

When I was very young, maybe 8 years old, I wrote a baseball game in Q-BASIC. I remember showing my dad and getting him to say 'wow'. That was pretty fantastic. That was back in DOS 4.0, when real men used edlin.exe to modify config files.

What got you started using Mach-II?

I had just been hired into a ColdFusion environment coming out of a Java shop whose process I had built from the ground up to include Spring, Hibernate, Axis2, some unit testing and CruiseControl -- not too rigorous, but there was some structure. The shop I had hired into was using straight ColdFusion with no process, no framework, nothing. I needed more structure, so I started looking at frameworks. Mach-II was the cleanest, most efficient framework I could find. For the first time since Java I felt like my code was making sense, and that was a good feeling.

Mach-II has matured a lot since its inception. What are your favorite Mach-II features as of today?

I really like its integration with ColdSpring; the logging framework is also pretty spiffy. I hope to play more with that as time passes. The form taglib is also quite sweet; it's saved me a bunch of time with a few projects at work.

Everybody brings unique ideas and skills to the table. What one thing you feel you bring to Team Mach-II?

It's a bit too early to tell; my official contributions have been minimal. Unofficially my fondness for bourbon brings a certain drunken confidence that I feel the team was lacking prior to my arrival, though the merits thereof are open to debate. My hope is that if I revisit this question even within the next few months I'll have a better understanding of how I fit in.

Alternatively, I bring the beard.

It's an impossibility to spend 100% in front of a keyboard. What do you do for fun?

I work on my little farm, cook, and spend time with my wife. On our farm we have a horse, two goats, a pig, seven cats, three dogs and a flock of chickens. One of my favorite dishes to cook is french onion soup; it makes the house smell amazing.

If you were not a programmer, what would you want to do with your life?

A scenario too horrible to contemplate! Although I think I'd be a pretty passable Calculus teacher, or some other job with a high nerd factor.

Mach-II 1.8 Release Candidate Available

Team Mach-II (which is now six people strong!) is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Mach-II 1.8 RC1. Download Mach-II 1.8 RC1 now.

Mach-II 1.8 introduces numerous new features and also sets the stage for us to move forward to 1.9 code named "Integrity" and the big 2.0 release code named "Velocity".

New features and enhancements include:

Mach-II Runs on Google App Engine with Open BlueDragon

Those of you following the Open BlueDragon project know that there's some great work going on with OpenBD on Google App Engine. If you're not familiar with Google App Engine it's a really simple way to deploy applications written in either Python, Java, or now CFML, onto Google's cloud.

Dave Shuck recently contacted us and pointed out that due to some of the restrictions on Google App Engine, the "depends" attribute doesn't work. This is because up until now, the way "depends" worked was to inject methods into CFCs, write a modified version of the CFC to disk, and then instantiate the modified CFC from disk.

Since this was a no go on GAE, Peter looked into other ways of solving this problem. What he came up with is not only slick, but in the isolation test Peter created it garners a 9500% speed improvement (no, that's not a typo) over the old way of doing things. Note that "depends" only comes into play at load time, but shortening the load time in such a dramatic way means faster development for you. You can see details of the changes in ticket 456.

With the new "depends" functionality in place Mach-II 1.8 now runs great on Google App Engine with no changes to Mach-II itself, as you can see in Dave Shuck's test application on GAE.

Thanks to Dave for bringing this to our attention and for pushing the envelope with CFML on GAE. Having Mach-II running on GAE is fantastic, and the speed improvements it led to aren't bad either!

This Week in Mach-II: Loggers and Modules

Yet another week of great blog post posts from our wonderfully smart and talented community. I believe I owe Mike a round of bourbon after he gets done with the custom logger series and Brian gets something - I don't know what he drinks.

Building a Custom Logger Series

New Team Mach-II memember, Mike Rogers, has started an in-depth series of blog posts on building an IRC logger using Mach-II's logging package. Mike, I raise a tumbler to you.

• Implementing a Custom Logger in Mach-II, Part 1
• Implementing a Custom Logger in Mach-II, Part 2

Mach-II Deployment with Apache Ant
Mike Rogers on a roll and talks about Mach-II and deployement with ANT.

Using CKEditor with Mach-II and JQuery
Yet another Mike Rogers post where he discusses using the Mach-II form library, CKEditor and JQuery.

Mach-II and Module Config Files
Brian Klaas's second post in a series on his thoughts and methodology of building Mach-II modules.

Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) is now GPLv3 with Classpath Exception. Woot!

After extended deliberations and proposal by Team Mach-II and a period for public comment, Team Mach-II is proud to announce that  Mach-II Simplicity (1.8) will be released under the GPLv3 with Classpath Exception.  We made the decision to move to GPL for a variety of reasons, however rest assured none of the rights you've grown a custom to with the Apache 2.0 license has really changed.  We made this decision now because open source software licenses evolve over time and it's our due diligence to review that the license we release under is best for the benefit of the community and contributors alike. GPL is good for you because it mandates share and share alike.  The BER of Simplicity in our SVN repository just had the new licensed applied.

We added the classpath exception modifier to the GPL so you can still bundle Mach-II with any proprietary applications you may sell and distribute.  No need to worry - you don't have to open source your application just because you use Mach-II. The GPLv3 License is itself a copyleft license, but due to the Classpath Exception included in the new Mach-II license, you are free to use unmodified versions of Mach-II in any project, whether it be open source or closed source, free or commercial.  Team Mach-II highly encourages you to read our FAQs on how is Mach-II licensed and what you can do with the code for more insight.

Mach-II Glimpses: What We're Up To Lately!

I thought it would be cool to let you know what the Team has been up to lately.  We're glad to welcome Adrian Scott to Team Mach-II.  His bio, photo and complete list of life ambitions are forth coming. Welcome Adrian -- we are happy to have you!

Kurt

• "Pretty much completely rewrote the event-bean command" because of all the new stuff!"
• "I started a nice unit test [with MxUnit] that throughly tests all the new code in event-bean."

Rock on Kurt! Keep cookin' on that code.  Kurt is an un-sung programming powerhouse on Team Mach-II. He deserves more credit than he publicly gets.

Adrian

• "Planning out a series of beginner M2 tutorials. They'll be a pretty sweet resource."

Way to hit the ground running Adrian!

Peter

• "Writing documentation for the view tag library and the loop criterion attribute of cache-clear."
• "Building out some tools for the tools tab of the dashboard. RegEx tester and scribble page tools are forthcoming."
• "Coordinating on the last 10 tickets of over 180 tickets filed for 1.8 Simplicity."

Feels kinda strange commenting on myself, but consider myself colored busy this Fall.

Matt

• Attending SpringOne2GX: "Brain already going a mile a minute and that's only from the opening keynote."

I'm sure Matt will be back with even more Mach-II vision ideas.  We're really research new stuff for 1.9 and 2.0!

Brian

• "Working on some more Mach-II QuickStart screencasts."

Brian has done three great screencasts be sure to check the latest (as of the date of this blog post): Introduction to Mach-II events Part Two http://bit.ly/mCdVJ

Well, that's the quick update for this week.  More to come soon.