Announcing Fresh Scala

Folks,
I'm pleased to announce the Fresh Scala initiative.
One of the challenges with Scala development is the version fragility.  As traits change, the classes that depend on those traits "break" unless they are recompiled.  This means that as Scala grows and evolves, all the libraries that sit on top of Scala must be recompiled against the latest version of Scala.  This has presented a significant challenge as Scala 2.8 has evolved.  Each of the layers necessary to compile libraries (e.g., Scala -> ScalaCheck -> ScalaTest -> Specs -> Lift) must be compiled against the same version of Scala.  Because of this issue, it's been challenging to keep the growing number of Scala libraries up to date with Scala 2.8.
Fresh Scala aims to address this issue.  Fresh Scala is a community initiative that provides nightly builds of a collection of popular Scala libraries against a stable development branch of Scala.  Here's how it works:

• Paul Phillips is maintaining the "Fresh Scala" branch of Scala in his GitHub repository: http://github.com/paulp/scala/tree/fresh_scala Paul will merge stable trunk changes into the Fresh Scala branch
• The Scala Tools build system will pull changes from this repository and build "Fresh" versions of Scala as Paul applies patches to this branch.
• The following libraries will be built against the Fresh version of Scala: Akka, Lift, ScalaCheck, Scala Modules, ScalaTest, ScalaZ, Simple Build Tool, and Specs
• If any of the dependent libraries fail to compile and/or pass tests, the library maintainers will make reasonable efforts to fix their code within 24 hours.
• Every Sunday night (Pacific Time), a Fresh Milestone will be released of Scala and the above packages.
• The snapshot and milestone releases will be available via Maven, Ivy, SBT, etc. in the scala-tools.org maven repository.

The benefits of Fresh Scala to the community are:

• Continuous testing of Scala against popular libraries
• Fresh milestones on a weekly basis so that leading edge apps can be kept close to Scala 2.8 (and other pre-release versions) and there can be more extensive testing of frameworks, libraries and apps.
• Better feedback to EPFL about the status of Scala.

Over the next few weeks, we will get the Fresh Scala infrastructure built out and cranking out builds.  I'll put out an announcement and everyone can start using the latest builds.

I'd like to thank Paul for coming to my neck of the woods, putting the pattern matcher in jeopardy, to work on the core of Fresh Scala.  Thanks to Josh, Derek and the folks who are working on the Fresh Scala infrastructure.  Thanks to the library teams, especially the ScalaZ team, for joining in this effort.  And thanks to EPFL for creating Scala and working with the community as a whole to improve Scala and make it business-ready.

To keep up with the nuts and bolts of Fresh Scala, see this Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/scala-fresh

Thanks,

David


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