[Chameleon] upcoming Chameleon stuff

[Paul Spencer]

Listers,

there have been a couple of questions lately about when the next version 
of Chameleon will be available and I thought I would attempt to answer 
these and other questions with a quick email ... now that I look at it, 
its longer than I intended.  Keep reading, there is good information in 
here somewhere ;)

As most of you know, we have been diligently working on a new version of 
Chameleon.  The new version has been more than a year in the making ... 
which is odd because all the changes we intended to make were done in 
the first month or so :)

Initially we intended the next version to be version 1.1.  The intention 
was to improve performance of the core engine and to begin to look at 
the performance of individual widgets.  This was a modest goal and 
warrented only a sub-version number increase.  The changes we made to 
the core engine ended up requiring changes to most existing widgets, 
which necessitating more extensive testing.  Unfortunately (or perhaps 
fortunately) the new version became popular before it was stable enough 
to be released, and we started building new projects on it.  The thought 
at the time was to stabilize individual widgets as they were required by 
the projects that needed them, and after some time we would be ready for 
a release.  I guess that we are just now nearing the end of that process.

As we have proceeded, there have been more significant changes to 
Chameleon that were not planned when we started thinking of version 1.1. 
  This is not the best way to plan software, but we had to adapt to the 
realities of business along the way.  In any case, the changes have now 
been significant enough, and Chameleon is sufficiently different from 
the original 1.0 version, that we have decided it deserves a new major 
version number.  To forstall confusion on this front, I will explain how 
the next Chameleon release (and future releases) will be versioned.

Version x.0 is the initial stable release.  If there was a previous 
major version, then x will be one greater than the previous version.

Version x.0.x is a bug fix release, no new features should be introduced.

Version x.1 is the development version where new features will be added 
following the x.0 release.

Version x.2 is the next stable release containing new features.

All odd-numbered minor version numbers represent development versions, 
and all even-numbered minor version numbers represent stable versions.

When we are ready to move from version x to version x+1 because of 
significant changes in features, there will be an x.99 release.  This 
release will probably be called a 'community release' or something like 
that.  It will be considered a stable release of the code, but will be 
lacking in some non-functional areas like documentation.  Once we have 
completed all the other work, and gathered feedback from users on 
quality, we'll release a x+1.0 release.

So, the next version of Chameleon that you will see officially released 
will be version 1.99 to be followed by a 2.0 release a few months later 
(give or take).  In the next couple of weeks I hope to put out a beta 
version of 1.99 and then a couple of weeks after that I hope to put out 
a first release candidate.  If there are no significant issues then the 
1.99 release will happen sometime in May.

So what's new in Chameleon 1.99?  I'm working on documenting that, but 
the short answer is not much and everything :)  The biggest change has 
been the move from a service instance model to a map-file-based model. 
The use of templates is essentially the same, but now there are a great 
many new widgets available thanks to funding from a number of sources.

I will be attempting to divide widgets up into 'Packs' that group 
widgets of similiar scope or functionality, and it will be possible to 
download and install different versions of widget packs to help with 
upgrading between versions.  The widget documentation will be more 
extensive and there will be a web-based installation system available 
for those that desire easier installation and configuration.

There will also be a reasonably complete sample application with a 
number of different templates to showcase the various widget packs.

I'll have more details once I get the beta release out the door, but 
hopefully this has whetted your appetite and will give you enough to be 
satisified until the beta version is out.

Cheers and thanks for reading this far ;)

Paul
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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer@dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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