Quick update. Last week, yes I am that behind on my posts, Buildr was voted for incubation under Apache. Kudos to InfoQ for reporting the news even before we got to count the votes. We expect the movers to come in next week and help move the site, SVN and mailing list to our new digs.
As you can read from the comments, some people think it’s a daft idea (my words) to write a build system in Ruby for building Java (and Scala) code. And some are still holding on to the ideal of programming in XML. And as much as I’d hate to admit it, even more mistake the F5 key for a build process.
Either way, a lot of developers out there don’t mind language plurality, and judging from the mailing list responses, love what they see. And it’s always a pleasant surprise when you see a high quality patch coming from a developer who just picked up Ruby by hacking away some Buildr code. It is, that easy.
Couple of challenges remaining. There are some unresolved issues regarding licensing and releases, but we’ll figure those out as we go along, and hopefully get to present what we learned at a future ApacheCon.
And two things are still bothering me. The Buildr mailing list is hosted on Google Groups, and now I’m spoiled and hate having to go back to the 90’s (Apache uses ezmlm). Also, as we go through incubation the site URL will change twice. Say goodbye to PageRank and hello to broken links.
Maybe it’s time to start discussing a more modern infrastructure at Apache.
So the first full-on Ruby project at Apache. I hope it’s the sign of things to come. Apache is still known for Java/C hegemony, not a conscious decision, just a fact, but it does affect perception, so let’s change that.
And before I forget. I will be attending ApacheCon next week in Atlanta, if you have some time come and say hi.
Martijn Dashorst
Sterling Camden
Assaf