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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 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.

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!

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.

Proposed License Change for Mach-II 1.8

With the upcoming release of Mach-II 1.8 we are strongly considering a license change for Mach-II from the Apache 2.0 License to the GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) with a Classpath Exception. After much discussion we feel this is the best decision for the future of the project.

Please read the following draft announcement of this proposed license change and let us know your feedback. Unless you're in an unusual situation in terms of how you use Mach-II, this license change will have zero impact in terms of how you are able to use Mach-II with your projects whether they be commercial or open source.

If you have specific questions or concerns  about this license change that you don't want to address on the public list or via comments to this blog post, please feel free to email us directly at team at mach-ii dot com.

Please note that at this point this is a PROPOSED license change. We have not made the final decision to make this change and wanted to hear from our users before we did so.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

==========

Mach-II License Change

With the release of Mach-II version 1.8, the license under which Mach-II is distributed is changing from the Apache 2.0 License to the GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) with a Classpath Exception. Given the plans we have for upcoming versions of Mach-II, we feel that this license change is best for the future of the project and for our users.

Why is Mach-II changing to a different license?

Changing to the GPLv3 License with Classpath Exception will:

• Ensure that changes made to Mach-II are contributed back to the project. We hope this will help foster and grow the community around the Mach-II project, which will benefit all Mach-II users.
• Allow us to leverage additional existing open source libraries when needed. The GPL license and its variants are the most predominant licenses used in open source projects. With an Apache 2.0 License, Mach-II is not able to take advantage of any existing GPL code. With the GPL License, Mach-II will be able to leverage open source code released under practically any license.
• Reduce the potential for forks and derivative projects. The development of Mach-II has required more than nine man years and nearly $700,000 of effort (based on COCOMO) to date. We want to protect that investment for the benefit of the project and our users.

In addition, we feel that the Apache 2.0 License is more appropriate for complete applications than it is for frameworks and libraries such as Mach-II. In our opinion, the GPLv3 License with Classpath Exception is a more sensible license to use for a framework.

Does this license change affect Mach-II users?

No. You may continue to use Mach-II free of charge and without restriction in all of your projects.

Does the GPLv3 License mean I have to open source my application code that uses Mach-II?

Absolutely not. 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.

I have a Mach-II application that I distribute. Can I still distribute my application bundled with Mach-II?

Yes. If you are using an unmodified version of Mach-II, your application may be distributed as part of the GPLv3 + Classpath Exception License.

If I make changes to the Mach-II core for my own or my company's use and don't distribute the changes, do I have to make these changes available as open source?

If you make changes to the Mach-II core and do not distribute the changes as either a standalone modified version of Mach-II or bundled with an application, you are not required to make these changes available as open source under the terms of the license.

We strongly encourage you, however, to share your new features in Mach-II and ideas for changes with the project so that they can be considered for inclusion in a future version of Mach-II. This benefits the Mach-II project and all its users.

If I make changes to the Mach-II core and distribute these changes either as a modified version of Mach-II or as part of an application, do I have to make these changes available as open source?

Yes. Under the terms of the GPLv3 License, any changes made to the Mach-II core that are distributed either as a modified version of the Mach-II core or as part of an application must be made available as open source. This does not mean, however, that the application being bundled with the modified version of Mach-II must be made open source. Only the changes to the Mach-II core itself would fall under the copyleft provisions of the GPLv3 License.

How does this affect the licensing of previous versions of Mach-II?

Previous versions of Mach-II will remain licensed under the Apache 2.0 License that was applicable at the time of their release.

Where can I get more information?

If you have concerns about how this license change affects your Mach-II projects or have general questions that are not addressed here, please send an email to team@mach-ii.com or post to the Mach-II Google Group and we will be more than happy to assist you. If you want to learn more about the GPLv3 License, please refer to the GPLv3 license page, the GPLv3 FAQ page, and the Classpath Exception page on the GNU Project web site.

Team Mach-II Meeting Notes - 9/29/2009

If you're interested in learning more about what's going on inside the Mach-II project, make sure and read our latest team meeting notes. As always we like to be completely open about what we're doing in order to get early feedback from our users. There are a couple of references to "new features" in the notes that we'll be announcing once they're more fully baked. We promise you'll like what you see!

Mach-II 1.8 Beta Available

Team Mach-II is proud to announce that Mach-II 1.8 beta, code named "Simplicity," is now available for download.

New features in Mach-II 1.8 include:

• Form Tag Library with Data Binding
  Create and populate HTML forms with the new Mach-II custom tag library for forms. All HTML form inputs are available, including radio and checkbox groups, and you can easily bind data to form input values.
• View Tag Library
  Handy view-related functionality bundled up in easy-to-use custom tags for URL routes, JavaScript, CSS, and even color flipping.
• Environment Property
  Configure and manage environment-specific settings for easy deployment to development, staging, and production servers.
• HTML Helper Property
  Allows you to more easily manage the HTML facets of your Mach-II requests, such as including necessary JavaScript and CSS files, adding meta information to the view, specify character sets, and more.
• View Loaders
  Automatically generates the <page-views> section of the mach-ii.xml configuration file based on simple yet highly flexible ANT-style pattern matching.
• Call Method Command
  Allows for the calling of a method in a service object directly and placing data returned in the event object, as opposed to having to create a listener method that simply calls a service method.
• Enhanced Redirect Functionality
  Announce redirects from within listeners, filters, and plugins with the new redirectEvent() and redirectEventInModule() methods.
• Individual Object Reload
  The Mach-II Dashboard now allows you to reload individual objects in your application with a simple click, so you no longer need to reload the entire application when cached objects change.
• Toolkit Enhancements
  New CFCs in Mach-II support assertions and both simple and ANT-style pattern matching.
• Additional Enhancements
  Additional enhancements include the copyToScope() helper method, a more configurable email logger, and many more. We've also made numerous performance improvements under the hood.

Bug fixes in Mach-II 1.8 include:

• HTMLHeadElement and HTTPHeader callbacks failed to be removed from EventContext (bug #305)
• Method checking fails when extending a logger due to failure to walk inheritance tree (bug #303)
• View context throws an ambiguous exception appending view content on to a complex event-arg (bug #263)
• BuildUrl() and related methods orders args randomly (bug #264)

For complete details on Mach-II 1.8 please see the "What's New in Mach-II 1.8" page on the Mach-II wiki.

With Mach-II 1.8 we have also laid the groundwork for Mach-II 1.9 and 2.0, and we've already started on those releases. As we've stated before, we're going to start pushing for smaller, more rapid release cycles, so you can expect Mach-II 1.9 before the end of the year!

So what are you waiting for? Go grab Mach-II 1.8 beta now, put it through its paces, and let us know what you think!

Removing Event-Handlers Programmatically

In a recent application of mine, I have a large collection of test event-handlers that we use to test certain application functionality (such as javascript).  While very useful for us when developing the application, we do not want to deploy these event-handlers when the application is deployed to our production environment.  So what are the options?

• Manually comment out the event-handlers when deploying (very messy, error prone, possible security concern if forgotten)
• Programmatically remove the event-handlers when the application is deployed to a production environment (best solution because a computer does it for us)

I thought it would nice to share this code with other Mach-II users so I wrote up a short wiki entry that demonstrates how we did it. It even includes a working sample code that you can use and shows off some nifty new features in Mach-II Simplicity (1.8), so read Removing Event-Handlers for Security Purposes wiki entry now.  You never know when you'll need this bit of code.