We only had 4 people available to meet. There was some discussion which @simonhooker will document, but our current plan is to reschedule the meeting to next week at 8pm UTC.
Alas I won’t be able to make the meeting tonight (I shall try but preparing for the worst case) so my comments in advance (and from the previous pre-meeting):
Core/Community Extensions. What’s what?
PDF Support (see above)
I think features should work very hard to become core. Things like PDF, Image, Video, ORM, etc etc should always be extensions and available to download separately. Something that would be used by the MAJORITY (defined by number of installs) should be made core eventually.
PDF is a great example of this, people that use it keep telling me that it is a must, but having done enough consulting I see very people ACTUALLY using it as a feature. So, objectively, it should be an extension and maintained by those interested.
Easing the triage log jam – there are far too many JIRA tickets in state “New” which don’t seem to have been touched by LAS.
Give us the power to at least triage and I think we shall? isn’t that the consensus?
Any additional items members wish to bring up
Can we talk next time about how extensions make it to the list? Is there an extension store?
Date/Time: 4th November 2015 @ 20:00 UCT In Attendance: Brad Wood, Simon Hooker, Kai Koenig, Sean Corfield, Igal Sapir, Micha Offner, Dominic Watson Absent: Luis Majano, Mark Drew
Summary of votes taken in this meeting
Full details of the discussions surrounding these tickets can be found in the minutes below
LDEV-568 Create a function textWidth - Rejected ( 8 - 1 )
Create a spreadsheet of functionality that people wish Lucee had, rating them on accordingly
Core - Ships out the box, developed by LAS core dev team
Extension - Developed by LAS core dev team
Extension - Under direction of LAS
Extension - Community
Third party libraries are required for some functionality ( i.e. PDF ) potentially adding to development cost - how should these be paid for?
What do we want LAS to provide?
What should people contribute?
Guidance to help community members to contribute is needed
Lucee 5 extensions very different to Lucee 4 so new documentation required documenting the full process from source through to building and deployment.
Webinars / presentations on this subject would be a good idea.
Extensions can be bundled on-demand within the lucee jar. The interface to do this is still a work in progress.
Will there be the option for an “extension shop” to allow developers to monetise extensions?
Ortus / Rasia have already got commercial extensions, so creating a common shop could have merit
Centralise extensions in one location
Seperate extension providers for commercial providers independant from LAS an option
Concern expressed that bundling third party providers by default could be deemed a LAS endorsment which may not be a good idea.
Hibernate used as an example which was originally “core” but is (in 5) being moved to be an extension with a view to community members maintaining it.
Discussion about plans to move Image functions into an extension, but one that is bundled with Lucee by default.
What is a required extension?
What is an optional extension?
What is an extension that isn’t bundled with Lucee at all?
Some incompatibilities potentially an opportunity to educate users instead of working to implement the same gotchas as exist in ACF
When bundled extensions don’t work 100% the same as ACF there are concerns that it reflects poorly on Lucee as an engine, even though it’s an extension to the core.
Some opinion to the contrary that we should make it “warm and fuzzy” for ACF users to help attract ACF users.
Option suggested to supply a package that is “ACF-compatible” which can optionally be paid for to fund support for the extensions and third party licenses.
Concerns that the above would conflict with the idea of LAS
Community liason between LAS and extension developers to keep them informed as to planned major changes relating to extensions? (Developer Advocate)
Webinars around how to build extensions useful
A page documenting functionality ACF has that Lucee doesn’t with reasons why would be desirable.
“Module” potentially a more accurate name than “Extension” for these bundles of functionality.
Documentation needs to focus on Lucee 5 extensions along with some guidance as to how to migrate a Lucee 4.x extension.
Conclusion
Action Micha Offner to supply a first draft of the documentation for extensions
PDF Support
This agenda item was not specifically discussed, however was mentioned in context of previous agenda item
Easing the triage log jam
This agenda item was not discussed
Review enhancement tickets
A selection of existing proposals and enhancements were selected for review during this TAG meeting. Not all selected tickets were able to be discussed within the time allowed.
LDEV-568 Create a function textWidth(text, fontSpecification)
Vote taken
[ 8 votes ] Reject LDEV-568
[ 1 vote ] Add LDEV-568 to backlog
0 abstensions
Reasons for rejection
This is inappropriate functionality for the Lucee server in the context of modern web development.
Date of next meeting November 24th 2015, 20:00 UTC
Vote on LDEV-568 Create a function textWidth: Reject
This was probably the easiest “reject” vote I’ve had to do so far. Personally, I don’t see much value in this function at all, but if someone really needs to have something like that, they’re free to build it as a 3rd party extension.