What should be improved / changed

Issues connected with the new version
Build of the latest version

• Use Git instead Svn
  • Use Git flow to manage the repo and development process
    • http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
    • https://github.com/nvie/gitflow
    • http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/why-arent-you-using-git-flow/
• Switch to Java 1.6
• Update "internal" injection to use current Guice version
  • Consider usage of http://onami.apache.org/
• Refactorings for further extensibility based on questions on the list, on CodeRanch, and Stack Overflow
  • JR plugin refactoring. Allow compiled reports as classpath resources.
• Refactor conversion of primitives (and wrappers) in XWork
• Switch to OGNL 4.0.
• Consider renaming packages to org.apache.struts3
• Remove deprecated Plugins
  • Codebehind
  • Dojo
  • Struts1 ?
• Normalize property name camel-casing (foo.bar.BazPlugh to foo.bar.bazPlugh)
• Check possible usage of Tiles Auto Tag (http://tiles.apache.org/tiles-autotag/) instead of Struts Annotations

Development plan of Struts 3

M1 - (aka Struts 2.5)

• Request Git repo from INFRA
• Import project

1. Remove deprecated plugins
   1. we need place for deprecated stuff (to move the source code to) - new project "struts-archive"
   2. drop support for Struts 1 (remove plugin)
   3. dojo plugin
   4. codebehind plugin
   5. jsf plugin
2. Remove deprecated APIs
   1. if it cannot be removed, mark to be removed during work on 3.0
3. Switch to Java 1.6
4. Merge XWork code into Struts Core (without renaming packages)
5. Switch to strict DMI by default - allow only defined methods to be accessible via DMI - user can always change that list
6. Prepare the first release
7. Cleanup website
   1. new user guide totally developed out of Confluence - people could contribute to it via GitHub

M2 (alpha Struts 3)

1. Finish merging XWork code base (rename packages)
2. Rename Struts 2 packages to org.apache.struts3
3. Use loggin layer https://code.google.com/p/anodyzed/ (Chris Pratt is willing to donate that project to Struts)
4. Switch to OGNL 4
   1. we must release it first
   2. also we need better API interfaces to allow integrate Struts with other EL engines, ie.: MVEL - right now the whole conversion layer is hardly tied with OGNL
5. Divide core into api and spi
6. prepare ALPHA release

Cleanup website

There should be just one project website - Apache Struts. Right now there is the main website - Apache Struts project, subsite Apache Struts 1 and another subsite Apache Struts 2. After announcing EOL of Struts 1, we basically supporting just one version or rather branch - Apache Struts 2 which should be at some point converted just into Apache Struts (version 2.5, version 3.0, version 3.1, etc.).

With that in mind we should have just one website to manage the project.

Undiscussed ideas

• Better support for modern webframeworks like AngularJS (@grobmeier)
• Make use of slf4j and probably log4j2 (@grobmeier) - support for slf4j is already there, thanks to Johannes, check Logging
• Provide alternatives to java property file translations (@grobmeier)
• Replace css and xhtml theme with an new html5 theme. (@jogep)
• Extract XML configuration to dedicated plugin - XWork will provide only configuration via code, then user can decide which configuration to use - code, XML, convention, DB?