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Riyad –
Thanks for the reply. Consider new customer scenarios too. A new shop embracing Struts 2 will search for developer tools that align with that product. If MyEclipse does not show up on the radar, they will contract with a vendor who does have a match. As far as existing customers go, I consider Struts 2 to be the “support and maintenance” you spoke about that go along with a feature you have already decided to include. Put another way, imagine this marketing piece:
We provide excellent developer tools for Struts 1.X but have no plans to support versions of Struts beyond 1.x.
It’s not like you decided to NOT provide support when Struts advanced from 1.1 to 1.2!
I can appreciate the problems that arise from oiling only the squeaky wheels, but I can’t imagine how you could hope to keep existing customers using this philosophy.
Scott Stanlick
Scott,
Well said. I’ll bring this up in our meeting later this week. I appreciate your well thought out points.For the folks requesting Struts 2 support, are you evaluating it or having you actually rolled it out. If you have rolled it out already, what do you think of it so far?
@support-rkalla wrote:
For the folks requesting Struts 2 support, are you evaluating it or having you actually rolled it out. If you have rolled it out already, what do you think of it so far?
We have not rolled it out yet, but do have experience with it. Currently we are targeting Webwork with a planned migration to Struts 2 once it has been released as stable and had a few months to get kicked around a bit. (at a guess q4 2007 or q1 2008)
Since Struts 2 is heavily based upon Webwork and we have done some tests with the curent beta I feel I can speak to the subject a bit.
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Configuration and structure in Struts 2 is much cleaner than in Struts. Testing, validation, and rollout are easier as well since there are no solid dependencies on the servlet classes.
Handling of form submission and population is cleaner than in Struts. Obviating the need for the Formbean was pleasant for me.
I never tried interceptors in struts, but they are easy to use and configure in Struts 2.
The well defined structure of Interceptors => Actions => Results in Struts 2 tends to lead to better code layout. This structure is also possible in Struts but it does not lend itself as naturally in my opinion. The ability to easily run unit tests upon the Actions should not be underestimated, especially in large projects.
The espousing of FreeMarker templates at the cost of JSPs and Velocity templates might not be in their best interests. We have found it easier to write poorly performing Freemarker templates than Velocity templates. There are some tangible benefits in terms of structure, but at a noticable performance cost.
Documentation for Webwork and Struts 2 is currently lacking. This leads to longer lead up times while certain parts are figured out. Once you have experience in the framework however this point is moot.
—————————————————It is an intangible, but I have found that Struts 2 lends itself better to clean separation in the MVC architecture.
Overall I have found both webwork and struts 2 incrementally, though substantially, better than Struts. This is not a revolution, but it does make for more testable, better structured apps in my opinion. The use of Spring 2.0 as the IOC layer, the OGNL stack, and decoupling from the servlet api are probably the biggest changes.
And +1 for Struts 2 support. 😉
If this is the way voting works, I would like to cast my vote for struts2 too! We are targeting Struts2 and will need an editor that is savvy.
Scott
-1 for me.
Struts is outdated, and even though Struts 2 brings some life into it again, the whole industry seems to be moving to JSF solutions. I really don’t want to start any Struts 2 vs JSF flamewar, but the thing is that the MyEclipse team can only do this much in a given amount of time.
Struts 2 support would be fine with me, but not at the expensive of JSF support.
Please remember that the current JSF support in MyEclipse is fairly limited and plagued with many little inconveniences (like i18n keys not recognized when using [] syntax, no navigation to managed beans). On top of that, there is no support at all for JSF 1.2 (think global resource bundle definition, unified EL, pluggable TLD processors, etc).
So unless MyEclipse is able to hire 10 extra developers to implement Struts 2 support, I strongely vote *against* this.
