Wanted! Front Man 2 beta testers

[Bear Bibeault]

Want to test out Front Man 2?

I should probably call this a gamma test because I've been using the code in production for a few months now -- but it's not ready for general release because the documentation is not yet complete.

I was going to hold off and announce general availability when the docs are done, but I'm going to be strapped trying to get jQuery in Action, 2nd Edition out the door, so I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to complete the docs.

For the adventurous who don't mind reading a bit of code to figure out what's what, this is a chance to get the latest and greatest.

Note: the Javadoc is in pretty good shape.

Here's the preliminary readme.txt:

Front Man 2.0 beta

What's in the distribution?

frontman.bundle-2.0.0.jar, Front Man core plus all plugins

frontman.core-2.0.0.jar, Front Man core only

frontman.injection-2.0.0.jar, Front Man Injection plugin

frontman.logging-2.0.0.jar, Front Man Logging plugin

frontman.responder-2.0.0.jar, Front Man Responder plugin

frontman.sources-2.0.0.zip, Front Man sources

frontman.docs-2.0.0.zip, Front Man documentation (woefully incomplete)

lib/, dependency jars for plugins

What's new in Front Man 2?

Less, and more.

Less:

• Configuration. Except for the deployment descriptor, all configuration can be accomplished via convention or annotations.


• Dependency. Front Man 1 required the Commons Logging jar. The Front Man core (the equivalent of everything in Front Man 1) requires no external jars.

More:

• Numerous improvements, including more efficient command auto-discovery


• Support for friendly URLs


• A new ViewBroker controller


• Plugins:
  
  
  
  • Injection, automatically inject request parameters into Pojos or commands.
    
  • Logging, hook up to Log4J
    
  • Responder, easy response generation, including JSON serialization
    

Documentation

The Javadoc has been included in the distribution in file frontman.docs-2.0.0.zip.

This includes a PDF which is eventually intended to be the primary documentation for Front Man
but is currently only in a nascent stage.

An overview is available with the Javadoc at:
frontman-docs-2.0.0/api/org/bibeault/frontman/package-summary.html

If you are interested, please email me (address in profile) for the super-secret location of the beta download. I want to keep track of who has this so I can make sure everyone is kept up to date with developments.