GeoExt2 Sprint Results

Today was the final day of the sprint, and we are proud to announce that GeoExt2 is ready for an early alpha release. Most of the key features that our sponsors were interested in could be ported from GeoExt1. Examples matching previous examples are available for most of the ported components, so it should be easy for application developers to port their applications to Ext4/GeoExt2.

To continue our tradition of giving credit to the developers who put an incredible amount of energy into making GeoExt2 a reality, here is the list of today's achievements:

• Alexandre finished a MVC demo application that shows the power of Ext4 and GeoExt2, and fixed many tests and examples.
• Andreas and Julien were able to finish big portions of the tree functionality, just in time before the end of the sprint, and just before going crazy over the complexity of the internals of Ext4. In addition to the synchronization between map and tree, all the loaders (except for the LayerParamsLoader) and the TreeNodeComponent plugin were implemented. Because the Ext4 architecture of trees is too much different from Ext3, a new (and nicer) API for building tree configurations was introduced.
• Bart and Matt and Frédéric wrapped up their work on data components - even the not so famous ones like the SymbolizerColumn or the GeocoderCombo. A nice improvement, which also received contributions from other sprinters, is the common OwsStore base class for OGC data sources. Bart also brought basic i18n to GeoExt2.
• Christian, Marc and Johannes made all print components work with Ext4. They also made huge improvements to many of the examples.
• Éric gave the new MapPanel a big overhaul, so it is more lightweight and feature complete than the initial port. Together with François, he finished the AttributeReader and all components from the form namespace. They also took care of dependency management and made improvements to the build story.
• Stéphane did a great job reviewing many of the pull requests that had piled up during the week, and helped to keep the pile of open tickets small. He also contributed to the MVC demo application mentioned above.

Next Steps

Over the weekend, we will be trying to brush up the API documentation and create an official alpha release. At this point, some components still need unit tests, and there may be some loose ends that are best encountered by using GeoExt2 in real life applications.

This means: we invite everyone to test the upcoming alpha release, or get the latest code from github. Bug reports, and - more than ever - code contributions and bugfix pull requests on github are welcome. Getting out a final 2.0 release soon is a goal that can only be reached with help from the community. For talented developers, a reward for repeated quality code contributions is the nomination for GeoExt2 core committer status.

Thanks again to all our sponsors, and to terrestris for the organization of the sprint and the perfect venue. And of course to all my fellow sprinters for all the good and hard work.

Happy coding, and may the odds be ever in your favor!