A new release model for Osmorc
IDEA XI is coming and so is a new version of Osmorc. The exact release date is yet to be told, but since JetBrains is already sending out mail about IDEA XI being "around the corner" it can't be that far. In this post I'm going to tell you about Osmorc's new release model starting with Osmorc 1.4.0, which comes bundled with IDEA XI.
The last year has not been a very good one for Osmorc in terms of updates and bugfixes. The decision to have Osmorc being shipped as a bundled module with IntelliJ IDEA brought lots of new users, however it brought up a big issue - Osmorc was now being tied to IDEA's release schedule.
You'll probably say: "Why is that, there is still the plugin exchange where you could push updates to?". And yes there is. However IDEA has two folders for holding plugins - the bundled plugins live in a folder inside the installation folder of IDEA. The plugins from the plugin exchange live in a folder below the user's home directory. If the same plugin - regardless of the version - lives in both folders, IDEA would load the version from the user's home directory. So if I pushed an update to Osmorc via the plugin exchange any later version of IDEA would still use that update even if it had a newer version of Osmorc bundled. I did this experiment once and it failed miserably, causing some IDEA installations to not even start up correctly until the outdated Osmorc plugin was removed from the user's plugin folder. So that basically limited Osmorc's release cycle to IDEA's release cycle.
This is now over. IDEA XI actually compares the versions of the plugins in both folders and loads the newer one. This means, I can safely push updates to the plugin exchange, without having to fear that it will break the IDE of people trying to work with it. It also means, I can fix critical bugs more quickly and introduce features in a "release early - release often" manner instead of bigger updates every six months. Given my limited development time (contributors are welcome!), I'm currently looking at bi-monthly feature updates, however this is just a raw measure. Whenever a new feature is done and justifies a new release, it will be released.
As usual, with the new IDEA XI release, older versions of Osmorc are no longer being maintained. I will backport critical bugfixes to Osmorcs 1.3.x, but there will be no more features for Osmorc 1.3.x and no more bugfixes or features for versions older than 1.3.x.
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Hi Jan
Looking forward to the new release for IDEA XI - any ETA for the release?
Hi Luke,
I just published 1.4.0 for IDEA XI Community Edition. The Ultimate Edition comes bundled with Osmorc 1.4.0. I'm also working on Osmorc 1.4.1, which will feature several improvements for people who are manually editing Manifests.
Jan