Generics and commons-collections

A debate has started up over in Jakarta-Commons as to whether a new version of commons-collections should be created that supports JDK1.5 generics.

Unfortunately, I happen to think that generics (as implemented) have serious flaws. There are just too many weird behaviours and odd corner cases. Just look how big the FAQ is - a sure sign of serious problems. And they also look darn ugly too!

A forked version has been created on sourceforge with generics, but that is far from ideal, as Apache can't link to it (official policy) nor can it easily be kept in sync. However, it does show that the task is possible. Could the fork be brought back to Apache? Well possibly, but that gets bogged down in bureaucracy when the forkers don't have Apache commit priviledges. Even more so when the relevant Apache committer (me) isn't particularly motivated by the issue (generics).

Anyway, I'd like to ask anyone reading this a question or two - do you want a generics JDK1.5 version of commons-collections? Would you mind if parts of the API were changed to fix API design flaws (this would be a major release after all...)? Please comment here, or at Commons JIRA. You can also just vote for the change at JIRA.

Commons IO 1.1 done and dusted

Yay! I've successfully navigated the long drawn out process of releasing code from Apache, and Commons-IO 1.1 is now available for download.

(For those of you wondering, Apache demands way more security checks and file updating than a sourceforge release. Thats why, I try and avoid being release manager at Jakarta Commons if possible.)

Anyway, enough of my whining... just go and get the new release! It makes coding any kind of simple IO just a whole lot easier!

Open source loose ends

It seems that I have a lot of OSS loose ends to tie up. Or alternatively, its scary how many things are needing a release.

Tonight I played with Joda-Primitives. This was my own breakoff from Commons-Primitives when I realised that I preferred a different design to commons. (Joda's primitive collections subclass JDK Collections, Commons' classes don't.)

Also waiting to be sorted are Commons Collections 3.2, IO 1.1 and Lang 2.1. And not forgetting the big Joda-Time 1.0. Somehow I need to get all of these done and dusted, while still keeping the day job. Sometimes I marvel at the amount of effort put in by other OSS developers, but maybe they're lucky enough to be able to work on OSS during work hours?