Saturday January 18, 2003

Velocity sucks

I've been trying for days to get it working as advertised, see Velocity help sought. Of course it doesn't actually suck, but it has been quite frustrating, and I'm surprised at its shortcomings given the adoption it has received from people whose technical skills I've come to respect.

Velocity doesn't allow for overloading macros (more than one macro with the same name but different arguments), and it throws parse exceptions if a macro calls another macro that hasn't been declared yet at parse time. In the latter case it still works, but you'll see errors in the log. Finally, if I try to load a macro library using \#parse("lib.vm") the macros in that file are not visible to the calling template. I've been all through the documentation, many times, but haven't found a setting to fix this (in fact, found some text that implies this is forbidden). I think I understand the technical implications, but damn, this seems like an important bit of functionality.

My particular problem has been getting macros read in at servlet startup time. I've followed the directions, Googled, read the mailing lists, queried the mailing lists, and experimented extensively. No good. The macros themselves are fine, because if I \#parse("roller.vm") in a page Velocity finds and parses it just fine. So it isn't finding the file on startup, but it throws a NullPointerException rather than a ResourceNotFoundException, which is odd. There appears to be no way to get a stacktrace of the error so that I can be sure, and the ResourceManager.getResource() has the exact same exception message in two places so that I can't tell which one is throwing the error (without a stacktrace).

So I'm frustrated. I'm sure Velocity is a fine piece of engineering, but it won't work for me. Argh. It occurred to me in the middle of the night that perhaps bad-mouthing Velocity would get me more help than my (so far) polite requests for assistance.
( Jan 18 2003, 08:28:19 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [11]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/velocity_sucks

For further reading on today's posts:

Apache Wiki: Articles About Velocity : http://brainopolis.dnsalias.com/roller/page/lance/20030118#velocity_sucks - Velocity Sucks (Lance Lavandowska) (At first glace, this looks like a Velocity sucks article, but not quite...read my response...=) -jon) Vanity Foul : It's the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Or sliced bread (mmmmm, toasted cheese sandwiches...). Okay, maybe that'll balance out my Velocity Sucks post. Jon's subtle prod to keep looking inspired me to checkout the Velocity-tools project, where I found the VelocityViewServlet , which gave me the hint to my solution: the WebappResourceLoader . Additionally this requires the "Velocity Servlet" to set the ServletContext during it's init() or initVelocity(). You can see the PageServlet ...

Friday January 17, 2003

Featuritis

Matt likes the proposed feature list from Ted's Geekblog:

Looking at this list of features that GeekBlog plans to add - I can't help but smile. I especially like the following:

Allow posting entries via EMail from weblogauthor

The best part - it's open source, so we *should* be able to copy the feature into Roller.

Someone recently posted an "integration" between HEP and Roller, I believe it provided a mechanism to "post via email". I've got to try it out sometime.

It is a good list, and Roller is well on its way, with several implemented or in the works. Roller also shares some "planned features", comparing the list against our JIRA entries.

And I don't see any reason why Roller and Geekblog couldn't crib code from each other, providing our licenses are compatible. ( Jan 17 2003, 10:47:01 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/featuritis

Thursday January 16, 2003

Velocity help sought

I'm still pretty new to Velocity, and I've run into a problem I cannot solve (yes, I've searched the Velocity archives, read the docs, did a Google search). I've converted all the behaviour from Roller's Macros object into a velocimacro library and made it the "default global" macro library, but Velocity is choking on it:

[info] Velocimacro : initialization starting.
[info] Velocimacro : adding VMs from VM library template : roller.vm
[error] ResourceManager.getResource() exception new: java.lang.NullPointerException
[info] Velocimacro : error using VM library template roller.vm : java.lang.NullPointerException

It looks like it is finding the file alright, but having trouble loading it. I've used the velocidoc and VeloEdit tools on roller.vm, and neither of them have complained... I don't know if the problem is really Velocity, or some "Velocity & Servlets" problem. If you'd like to help and take a look I'd appreciate it.
( Jan 16 2003, 08:40:33 AM ) Roller Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/velocity_help_sought

Release Soon?

I think Dave, Matt, and I need to discuss releasing 0.9.7 soon. I've been working on making Roller use Velocity in a "true" manner, Dave has implemented Linkback functionality, and there have been a mess of other changes.

Both Dave and Matt have features they want to work on. I'm thinking we should get something out soon before adding more, but then releases are a lot of work in and of themselves. ( Jan 16 2003, 08:34:01 AM ) Roller Permalink Comments [1] [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/release_soon

Wednesday January 15, 2003

Hollywood gets what it paid for

Sad, to be expected, but sad. Your entertainment dollars at work. ( Jan 15 2003, 08:34:12 PM ) News Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/hollywood_gets_what_it_pays

Intel processors stolen from Heathrow airport

I hadn't heard about this, but then I find I've been "news-challenged" since starting this job (or is it since I started blogging?). ( Jan 15 2003, 01:56:33 PM ) News Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/intel_processors_stolen_from_heathrow

My name is Lance, but you may call me Mr. Vane

Cool, I finally have a moniker. And pretty close to what I would have chosen myself. For the record, my relationship with my wife is *not* founded on misunderstanding, it is merely a major component of the relationship (believe me, it extends beyond the "professional" aspects). ( Jan 15 2003, 01:25:27 PM ) Personal Permalink Comments [1] [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/my_name_is_lance_but

Eclipse VeloEdit

Found a great new tool, Velocity UI for Eclipse. I tried it out on the velocimacros I've been working on for Roller, and it spotted several errors immediately. Nice! Feature request? Please add a "show line numbers" option, and some of the other options from the Java editor. Thanks go to Torsten Juergeleit! ( Jan 15 2003, 09:07:00 AM ) Technology Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/eclipse_veloedit