Progress on all fronts

Tapestry 3.1 is really getting into gear now; I've been working my way forward from the servlet, converting everything into HiveMind services, pipelines and configurations. I've also said sayonara to revision histories and been moving source code into "standard" directories (that is, src/java). I can see switching to Subversion for source control someday, just because it does a proper job of moves and renames -- history on files is maintained even when the file is renamed or moved to a new directory. It seems like CVS is pretty antagonistic towards refactoring, especially in context of the XP mantra of fearless, merciless, constant refactoring.

Tapestry's bug list is now under JIRA, which is so much easier, faster and more sensible than Bugzilla.

I've taken a pause from working on the Tapestry code to work on the Tapestry documentation. The awkward DocBook stuff is being phased out ... all the documentation will be converted to Forrest format, which means better and more consistent navigation. I realized that unless I had the Tapestry 3.0 documentation in a ready to edit form, I would not update it as I was making the real changes in the 3.1 code. As I found during Tapestry 3.0's too-long development cycle, if you don't keep the docs up to date as you work, your problems just multiply. With HiveMind, I've worked diligently to keep docs up to date at all times, and I want to start on the right footing for Tapestry 3.1 as well.

James Carman looks likely to be the newest HiveMind committer, the vote is in progress but opposition is unlikely. Meanwhile, I've just fixed a few nasty little bugs in HiveMind, in prep for release candidate 2. Nasty, of course, always means class loaders and/or thread concurrency. Now, throw dynamic class fabrication into the mix.

And I signed a contract for three months of work, possibly more (details to come). So the good news is that I have money coming in and am doing Tapestry work full time. The bad news is I don't have huge amounts of time to do things like build out the Tapestry lab course I've been dreaming of, or do the Hibernate research I've been hankering for (until and unless that becomes part of my contract). I've actually been full time with this client for almost two months; I've been letting others pick up the slack in terms of answering questions on the mailing lists while I do more and more heavy lifting on the code front (especially on the Tapestry side).

Much more urgent is the need to get out of the house and hit the beach! Summer's ending and I'm still pretty pasty-white. Time to break out the boogie boards and hit the waves.