The PlanetStruts.org domain is registered, but a minor technical glitch kept me from launching it yet. Same old, same old. The host has the wrong JAR in a priviledged, shared directory which is confounding the database. But, as soon as JAR hell is sorted out, all systems are go!

Planet Struts will be powered by Apache Roller. Using the Roller “Planet” feature, we can use it to aggregate the blogs of Struts Committers. The site can also host a “Newswire” blog to post announcements about Struts. Most of these will be taken from the Struts User list. I have about ten months worth of announcements to post to Planet Struts as part of the initial launch, just so people can see where the site is going.

To complement Planet Struts, I’ve been combining and updating various Struts resource directories into a new site “Struts Central”. It’s still under construction, but a working prototype is available through the Struts Mentor site (also still a prototype).

Next week

With Planet Struts and Struts Central counting down, I can refocus on the Struts 1.3.x release. We’ve been discussing how to resolve the checkstyle issues on dev@struts, and we seem close to consensus now.

I finished the first draft white paper on the Agitator software last week. The Agitator is a pleasure to use, and I might start using it with the Struts framnework code this week. We have a significant patch to apply to 1.2.x, so I’d like do an Agitator test to prove that we need the patch and then to show us it’s been fixed. Agitar has given me licenses to share with any Struts Committers who might want to create and run the tests.

Since I already post so much to public mailing lists, it’s been hard for me to keep up a blog. Anything I want to say, I can say on the list. Meanwhile, out in the field, one thing I hear time and again is that it’s hard to keep up with a project’s current events.

Out of these two dynamics, “This Week” is born. It’s not my intent to create new content here, or at least not much. The intent is to provide a high-level summary of what happens in the projects I follow. Many weeks nothing notable will happen on a project. Other weeks, there will be a clutch of events. I’ll also cover what’s happening on my own breadwinning projects, mainly to help me see how it all fits together. :)

It’s been a busy news week, bloggers. In Apache Struts, we lay the ground work for the WebWork merger, contemplate our inner Checkstyle issues, discuss canceling cancel, and even ship something.

In Rollerland, we weight the merits of Open Document Format and post a second release candidate for Roller 2.1. On the Husted dot Com homefront, we review the Agitator and unviel the Struts Mentor site (a work in progress).

Next Week

The big item for next week should be an honest-to-gosh Planet Struts website. Since Roller is a Struts application, it only makes sense that we setup an instance devoted to Struts. Planet would be a good place to post Struts-related announcements, along with running serials, like Struts Tips. As a special bonus, I’d like to use the Roller “Planet” tab to links to the blogs of Struts Committers. This could be embarrassing since, right now, most of the committers blog about as often as I do. :)

Over the years, Struts has gone from zero Checkstyle errors to over twenty thousand. I’d like to try and slim that down to around ten thousand by using automatic reformatting tools like Jalopy and IDEA. I tried it with the Action subproject, but there was some pushback. I need to check to see if everyone is on board before proceeding one way or the other.

Our draft proposal for bringing WebWork into Apache Struts via the Incubator has passed the muster on the Struts Dev list. Next, we need to do the same on the Incubator General list. Once that second hurdle is passed, we can bring the code into the Incubator repository and have at it.

• Don’t miss Patrick Lightbody’s WebWork podcast on Audiable Ajax.