[lyo-dev] Lyo 5.0 roadmap

[Andrii Berezovskyi <andriib@xxxxxx>]

Hello,

We are starting 5.0 development straight after the 4.1 release. The main prompt for the change is Jena 4.x migration. Before I jump to the plan, here are some Lyo Developer survey highlights:

- A total of 7 people responded, all of them directly using Lyo.
- 4 uses of Lyo 4.2.0-SNAPSHOT or 4.1, 2 uses of 4.0 (multiple choices allowed), 3 people using 2.4, 1 use of 2.3, 1 use of 2.2, and 2 uses of 2.1.2. Thankfully, nobody is using 1.x, 2.0.0, or 3.0.0-SNAPSHOT anymore. Lyo 2.4 and 2.1.2 are still going strong.
- 6 uses of JDK 8 versus 6 uses of JDK 11; one user on JDK 17 already (Lyo builds and passes all tests up until JDK 15 inclusive, we will check again while developing 5.0). Nobody reported being stuck on JDK 8 so badly they cannot upgrade their Lyo apps to JDK 11 in the future (70% yes, 30% maybe).
- When it comes to releasing frequency and breakage, users think we can release a bit more often and should prioritize features a bit more, even if it means slight breakage (both questions were answered with 0-3-2-2-0 on a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 means too many releases and too much breakage).

Top wishes from Lyo users for 2022:

- Better docs and demos. Including commercial tools and non-generated server development. For demos, add Configuration Management.
- Global Configuration Management support.
- Other items: support for pluggable Jena implementations, better AM support, a Typescript client/server implementation.

Thank you to all who responded to the survey!

The release plan can be found on https://github.com/eclipse/lyo/issues/79, in a short summary:

- 5.0.0.alpha1 will drop JDK 8 support and delete oslc4j-wink and oslc4j-registry but do no other changes (the PR Jad merged today will be reverted until .alpha4 is released).
  - PSA: oslc4j-wink includes an ANCIENT client 'org.eclipse.lyo.oslc4j.client.OslcRestClient' (do not confuse it with the old client 'org.eclipse.lyo.clients:oslc-java-client'). I found that only 'lyo-samples/oslc4j-stockquote-sample' uses it in the code we have.
- 5.0.0.alpha2 will migrate to Jena 4.0.0 and drop the old 'org.eclipse.lyo.clients:oslc-java-client'. Both Wink/JAX-RS1.1 clients are going away in 5.0.
- 5.0.0.alpha3 will upgrade to Jersey 2.35 and JAX-RS 2.1 from Jersey 2.25 and JAX-RS 2.0.
- 5.0.0.alpha4 will upgrade to Jena 4.3.1 (Jena upgrade done in steps because of [1])
- 5.0.0.beta1 will merge all the PRs and make the bug fixes we were planning so far.

Lyo Designer will not be part of this long-winded release plan. I hope 4 alpha releases will help you update your 4.x adaptors confidently and pinpoint any source of breakage quickly. I am planning to make the alpha releases quite quickly (up to a few weeks) but it may take a few months until 5.0.0.CR candidate release is ready.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!


Cheers,
Andrew

[1] https://jena.apache.org/documentation/sparql-apis/#changes