[jdom-interest] Status update and request for comments

[Rolf]

Hi all.

Having just come through a crazy few weeks at 'real' work, and sorting 
out a few other 'christmasy', and 'life' issues, I now have some 
significant time to throw at JDOM and to make some real progress. Now is 
also a good time to summarize and consolidate where things are.

I am also looking for feedback and criticism of the new code. I know 
that there have been some people playing with the code: 
https://github.com/hunterhacker/jdom/downloads ... how is it working out 
for you?

If you have not yet had a look, please check out the wiki pages:
https://github.com/hunterhacker/jdom/wiki/JDOM-2.0

The original objectives of the JDOM2 project are close to complete. To 
recap:

Admin things:
  - move to github,
  - package rename to org.jdom2
  - regression test harness
  - documentation

Required things:
  - generics
  - varargs
  - co-variant return types
  - enums

Corrective things:
  - XPath factory API
  - many bug fixes

Nice things:
  - upgraded XPath
  - upgraded SAX
  - upgraded Filter concept
  - namespaces-in-scope.

New things:
  - StAX
  - JDOMConstants


I have tried to keep the wiki pages up to date, for details on all the 
major functionality 'drives' in JDOM2 please check out the JDOM2 
Features page: https://github.com/hunterhacker/jdom/wiki/JDOM2-Features

Because the major objectives are essentially complete I want to bring 
the code to an 'official' ALPHA type state. I want to 'finalize' the new 
API's, to start down the road of getting a final release. I want to put 
out the 'Alpha' release on Jan 1, 2012. Hopefully it will be a new year 
resolution I can keep.....

JDOM 1.x spent years in 'beta', and I don't want the same thing to 
happen with JDOM2. Really, there's not that much that's different, so it 
should not be needed, but I think we have a better idea now of what's 
important in the JDOM API, so it is not as important to let the API 
'settle' as it is 'played' with in the JDOM2 cycle.

In other words, I fully expect any 'alpha' and 'beta' releases to be 
short, measured in weeks, not years.

It will have to happen at some point, but I don't want to miss anything 
out in JDOM2 because JDOM3 is decades away and changing the JDOM2 API 
will not be an easy option after it goes in to a 'beta' cycle!

This all requires participation and feedback... I need to know what's 
working, what needs improvement, what's missing.

If you can take the code for a spin... Apply it to your existing 
projects. Swap out the jdom 1.x jar you are using, do a search/replace 
for 'org.jdom' and replace with 'org.jdom2' and tell me what breaks....

Read this page: 
https://github.com/hunterhacker/jdom/wiki/JDOM2--Migration-Issues

I am putting together a separate mail detailing the changes I expect to 
be making in the next week.... and I will want some feedback on that too.

Thanks

Rolf