Release: gwt-validation 2.1 snapshot released!

I just wanted to let everyone out there in JSR-303 land know that we're not dead.  I work full-time, most weeks, as a Java consultant and don't always have time to get to this pet project.

However I wanted to let people know that we're on the road to 2.1 and that there have been some exciting changes.

First and foremost, the Java/reflective JSR-303 validation implementation no longer requires that Reflections do its scanning magic.  This is a huge improvement and will let us go forward into containerized environments that were previously closed off.  This includes some versions of Tomcat, JBoss, and Google's own App Engine.

Secondly, serialization has been addressed.  It has a long way to go but the basic serialization support is in there.  It mainly only works from server -> client however.  A lot of the things that GWT does to optimize serialization actively hinder this effort.  The steps made for 2.1 are just one of many that will need to be complete for this to be a fully working feature.

As a minor change, the project has been slightly rearranged.  There is now a parent pom, a core (gwt-validation), the compatibility tests, and the sample.  Most importantly to most people the gwt-validation-sample has been updated to work fully with Maven and should be much more straightforward to examine and run.

Finally, some work has been done on allowing the user to specify model classes.  This is not yet implemented as of r324 (the newest SVN revision as of this writing) but it is probably the last feature that will make it into version 2.1.  After that, we're just going to be looking at, maybe, a month of stabilization.

Actually, I'll go ahead and say it, we'll be releasing gwt-validation 2.1 on May 14th.  We're trying to get better at release engineering and time lines so we'll also be addressing that in future postings and discussions as well.

Thanks for sticking with the project, however small, over the years.  (Years, really?)

Happy validating.

Release: gwt-validation 2.0 released!

As of this morning gwt-validation was set up in Maven Central and the 2.0 release is available.  No more having to manually include the project!

Hopefully future releases will slim down the required library set and make it a little easier to work with for end users.  This is our goal.

Thanks for following along and using gwt-validation.

Cheers!

On gwt-validation, 2.0, and milestones

I've been working on the gwt-validation project for several years now.  I've not been a very good open source project leader at all.  I've been closed, uncommunicative, and passive.

Worst of all, I've not been providing direction.  I'm going to be changing all of that.

Where does this leave us?  Well, for starters, I've got an announcement to make.  The gwt-validation project is going to version 2.0 "soon."  This means that it will be available on the project page and in Maven Central as well.  That's right!  I said Maven Central.

I'm also going to be creating tasks for the 2.2 milestone.  The 2.1 milestone will be given over to fixing issues in the 2.0 milestone.  I'm looking forward to having people contribute on the 2.1 and 2.2 milestones.  I want to see that pom.xml file explode with people.

In addition to these things I'm going to update this blog with information on how gwt-validation works and what I've learned while making it.  Hopefully with a view towards improving the GWT community as a whole.

Stay tuned.