January 23, 2007

23 January 2007 - Apache Shale 1.0.4 released

The Apache Shale team is pleased to announce the release of Shale Framework version 1.0.4. The Apache Shale Framework is a modern web application framework offering a set of loosely coupled services, fundamentally based on JavaServer Faces, which may be combined as needed to meet particular application requirements.

Version 1.0.4 can be downloaded from the following page:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/shale/

A final vote on quality has yet to take place for this release. We intend to vote on the quality of each module separately where necessary. For example, the shale-tiles module is likely to receive a grade no higher than "Beta" because it relies on a snapshot of the as-yet unreleased Standalone Tiles package.

This release includes the following significant new features and changes:

  • The Shale framework now contains six new modules, allowing application developers greater freedom over choosing the bits they need. The new modules are shale-application, shale-dialog, shale-dialog-basic, shale-dialog-scxml, shale-validator and shale-view. See the version 1.0.4 website for documentation on all modules:
    http://shale.apache.org/1.0.4/
  • Several outstanding JIRA issues focusing on functional problems with the implementation of the Dialog feature have been addressed along with the refactoring in 1.0.4.
  • shale-clay has seen numerous improvements to the non-validating markup parser, template encoding, template namespace support, as well as JSF 1.2 basic support for Clay managed views and reduced inner dependencies for Servlet 2.3 compatibility.
  • It is now possible to build unit tests, using the shale-test module, that cater to JSF 1.2 APIs.

Additionally, this version includes a substantial number of bugfixes and enhancements, full details can be found in the release notes:

http://shale.apache.org/docs/release-notes-1.0.4.html

Most of the framework APIs are reasonably stable, please see the following web page for more details:

http://shale.apache.org/1.0.4/api-stability.html

For comments and questions, join us on the Shale mailing lists:

http://shale.apache.org/mail-lists.html

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-- The Apache Shale community

Posted by Tetsuya Kitahata at 10:06 PM

June 28, 2006

28 June 2006 - Apache Shale to Become Top-Level ASF Project

On behalf of the ASF (Apache Software Foundation) Board and Apache Struts PMC, we are pleased to announce that Apache Shale has been accepted as a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation.

As a top-level project, Shale will have its own website, mailing lists, repository space, and Project Management Committee. Shale will be an automomous ASF project, rather than a subproject of Apache Struts.

The Shale framework for JavaServer Faces is nearing its first stable release. As a top-level project, it will be easier for Shale to attract new developers and expand its growing community.

The initial set of PMC members and committers for Shale is:

  • Craig McClanahan
  • James Mitchell
  • Greg Reddin
  • Sean Schofield
  • Wendy Smoak
  • Gary VanMatre
  • Matthias Wessendorf

Apache Shale has strong ties to both the Struts and MyFaces projects. Most of the Shale PMC members are already involved in both projects, and plan on continuing to remain involved in them, along with Shale.

Apache Shale is a modern web application framework, intended for developers adopting JavaServer Faces as a core technology.

Shale began as a proposal for Struts 2.0, but instead became a subproject, so as to provide a JSF alternative for Struts developers. Recent developments for Struts Action 2 now make it easier for Struts developers to access JSF components from within an "action-based" application.

The initial Shale codebase was donated by Craig McClanahan, who also donated the original Struts codebase.

Posted by Tetsuya Kitahata at 09:46 PM