Roberto Chinnici's Blog

June 2006 Archives

First Phobos Build Available

We made the first Phobos build available on our project site. Just follow the instructions on the getting started page and you should be up and running in no time. In the coming days we'll be adding more documentation, e.g. regarding the application layout, as well as builds for other platforms, like Mac OS X.

In the meantime, here are a few items that could qualify as release notes:

• We are still working through the licensing of some libraries, so you may find that some functionality is missing. The most notable one is E4X.
• The scripting service does not pick up new engines from the classpath yet, so you can only use the built-in ones (JavaScript and JRuby).
• The container does not pass information about the context root to the application, so you need to set that up in the application/startup.js file (refer to the sample apps to see how it is done).
• Phobos applications are not fully integrated with the administration framework. In particular, they do not persist across server shutdowns, so you need to redeploy them each time you stop/restart the server.

Naturally, the biggest caveat is that this is work in progress so expect major changes from one build to the next.

Update: the Mac OS X and Solaris Sparc builds are now available.

A JavaScript Tutorial

If you need to brush up on your JavaScript, this tutorial is a great place to start (link courtesy of reddit).

The caveat on slide 83 about adding properties to Object.prototype resonated with me. Until now in Phobos we've tried to avoid modifying the built-in objects, but there are advantages in doing so, as Prototype shows. You'd think that on the server there'd be less opportunity for conflicts, but what if people start reusing bits and pieces of their favorite client toolkits? See also Joe's blog entry on how the community is self-organizing to deal with the most annoying naming conflict to date ($, of all things).

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