Status update
It's been a while since Apache Zeta Components was officially accepted for incubation in the Apache Software Foundation in May 2010. Since then, a lot of progress has been made, especially in the area of technical infrastructure and code drop. So, it's time to present the current status of the project and ask you to actively take part in the community!
Infrastructure
There's been a lot of work on the technical infrastructure for Zeta. First off, we have a new SVN, which you should use from now on to obtain the Zeta code. We did not roll an official release yet, mostly due to the fact that the release process is right now in discussion, to be adjusted to ASF needs.
The project mandatory mailing lists have been set up. So, if you want to contribute and take part in the community, please register for zeta-dev@incubator.apache.org. If you are only using Zeta Components, please use the user mailinglist at zeta-user@incubator.apache.org to discuss issues with other users. However, the developer mailinglist is also open for questions and problems. If you want to be up to date on commits to the SVN repository, you should subscribe to zeta-commits@incubator.apache.org and if you want to help fixing bugs, please subscribe to zeta-issues@incubator.apache.org.
Subscribing to any of the Zeta mailing lists is easy. Just send an empty email to
zeta-*-subscribe@incubator.apache.orgso, for example for the dev list, email zeta-dev-subscribe@incubator.apache.org.
We also have a new issue tracker, which you can use to file bugs. Furthermore, there is a code browser which you can use to inspect our source code without downloading it or checking it out from SVN.
Code drop
eZ Systems AS has performed the so-called code drop, which essentially means that the complete eZ Components SVN history was sent to the ASF and a contract was signed which completes the donation. Furthermore, Ole Marius Smestad from eZ Systems has performed license and copyright changes after the code was imported to our new SVN. So, the (now) Zeta Components code is from now on licensed under the Apache License 2.0. For you as a user, this does not change much, since the Apache License is basically as permissive as the former New BSD license was.
At this place, we want to take the opportunity to thank eZ Systems a lot for donating the eZ Components source code base to the ASF and therefore making Apache Zeta Components possible.
Contributions
Quite some contributions to Apache Zeta Components are in discussion on the developer mailinglist:
Jerome Renard and James Pic joined forces for providing an overrider mechanism for the Configuration component. This technique should allow you to specify multiple directories for configuration files (INIs) of which the first contains default values and all further ones can override these defaults. This is especially useful in large applications and for application modules.
Gustavo Solt from the PHProject team is implementing a proof-of-concept for CalDAV support for the Webdav component. CalDAV is an extension to WebDAV, which allows to synchronize calendars to a central server. CalDAV was already in mind when the Webdav component was originally started a couple of years ago, but time did not permit to implement it until now. Therefore, we are happily looking forward to this contribution.
There are some more enhancements in discussion on the mailinglist, so please subscribe there, if you want to take part in designing and/or implementing those! Furthermore, we are actively looking for contributors. So, if you use Zeta Components (or still eZ Components) and have a cool idea, found a bug or just want to provide a helping hand, please subscribe to zeta-dev@incubator.apache.org and join our team!