Richard Bair's Blog

Every Project needs a Name

An invaluable tool for ensuring good API design is to, well, use your own APIs. I usually have a half dozen partially completed apps in my workspace which I use to test the SwingLabs components and APIs. Sometimes I find our code to be extremely helpful, and sometimes I find ...er... that they need more work.

One such project (affectionately named JavaApplication1) is a front end for IssueZilla. I was putting issues into the DataBinding project and just couldn't take it anymore. That web UI is horrible! So I wrote a quick and dirty rich client implementation.

In the process of writing this little app, I started testing some of the edges of our databinding APIs, and found places that worked really, really well and places that needed some more work. I thought this would be a very valuable project to have on java.net for a couple of reasons:

1) Demos are only worth so much. Until we have a full application built on the SwingLabs components, we won't really know how well our stuff works

2) An application available to SwingLabs developers to collaborate on would make the process of discussing use cases and edge cases much easier

3) The world could benefit by not having to use the IssueZilla web UI (*shiver*)

Which brings me to the difficult question of the day -- what should I call it?

Richard

PS> Why yet another bug-viewer/project management/whatever tool? Because I doubt I could convince somebody else with any legitimate code base to allow us to muck with it and rewrite the whole app to use SwingLabs components

PPS> No, this project is _not_ part of SwingLabs, so you don't have to be a SwingLabs developer or sign the JCA to develop for it. And yes, we'll be reusing other open source code whereever possible

Comments

• I still say 'Buckminster' is the best name. :)

  Posted by: joshy on August 26, 2005 at 08:28 PM

• Swilla, tango(I like this!), bux, ...
  

  Posted by: sumitkishore on August 26, 2005 at 11:00 PM

• How about Issues Browser?

  Posted by: jessewilson on August 27, 2005 at 01:47 AM

• That's easy:
  - Don't start the name with a "j"
  - Don't end the name with a "x"
  And you should be fine :))

  Posted by: gfx on August 27, 2005 at 02:16 AM

• Jesse: Nice :). Maybe we can compare code for getting the data from IssueZilla.

  Posted by: rbair on August 27, 2005 at 08:29 AM

• zarobogsfound

  Posted by: swapnonil on August 29, 2005 at 11:48 AM

• http://worksforme.dev.java.net hmmm.... getting close!

  Posted by: swapnonil on August 29, 2005 at 11:52 AM

• This is very good idea, there are a lot of Swing APIs that were obviously never used in a real application (and we all suffer for it). Keep up the good work.

  Posted by: pietschy on August 29, 2005 at 03:46 PM

• SLabZilla :-) (just kidding)
  maybe, a bit more seriously, IssueLab, BugExplorer, ...

  Posted by: aaime on August 30, 2005 at 07:06 AM

• Egads, not another *Zilla!

  Posted by: rbair on August 30, 2005 at 12:12 PM

• Its simple, call it: JANAN: = Java Applications Need A Name.

  Posted by: claytonbarnette on August 30, 2005 at 07:40 PM

• RoachMotel - "Bugs check in, but they don't check out."

  ;-)

  Posted by: evickroy on September 26, 2005 at 11:24 PM

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