5 ms·

Scala 2.8.0 final

68 points by fogus 16y ago

ant5 16y ago
Scala isn't perfect, but it's a great language to have on the JVM. However, the lack of API and ABI compatibility is a really big failure. I can't believe that they're shipping what is supposed to be stable software and we can't rely on our code to continue running, much less building. We had to do a fair bit of work to fix our projects' 2.8 compatibility issues, and it's causing us all sorts of grief in terms of having to do lock-step upgrades of all libraries from 2.7 to 2.8.
- eeperson 16y ago
  My understanding is that this release is partly intended to fix some of the earlier design mistakes before it gains too much popularity. They wanted to do this now rather than later to prevent a python3 scenario.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - sgt 16y ago
      A new release that is not entirely backwards compatible with older code. Python 3 was created to fix some of the flaws in Python 2.x.
- joshhart 16y ago
  Would you rather Java? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? They've put a hell of a lot of work into making everything as compatible as possible with 2.7. At some point you need to say, enough is enough, we're going to upgrade out and people will have to make minor changes to their source code to get the new features. They had 7 release candidates, so they've made a commitment to quality and given people time to upgrade leisurely.
  - strlen 16y ago
    > Would you rather Java? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? ... or Perl5 for that matter. Python has continuously broken backwards compatibility in their APIs between releases and that has allowed it to shed much technical debt. It's annoying for developers, but it's better for the language and the ecosystem to keep evolving. Scala is taking the correct route here.
    - ant5 16y ago
      It's annoying for developers s/annoying/_expensive_/ but it's better for the language and the ecosystem to keep evolving. Of course it's good for things to evolve. But you're painting a false dichotomy here. Scala is taking the correct route here. In the short-term? Just once? That may be true due to just how broken some things were. In the long term? It's a very expensive thing to be breaking everyone's code and binaries.
  - ant5 16y ago
    Would you rather Java? Is that a real question or were you just setting up your false dichotomy via some well-placed rhetoric? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? Oh, so that's why Java is so bad? Because it has some stagnant corners in which they're maintaining backwards compatibility? That's silly. Backwards compatibility isn't holding back Java the language, or even Java the VM. Bad design decisions and an almost knee-jerk opposition to any forward progress holds Java back. You don't have to break compatibility to implement closures, you just have to herd cats until you can get people to agree on a proposal and implement it. They've put a hell of a lot of work into making everything as compatible as possible with 2.7 But it's not actually compatible. And it may not be again in the future. And it's really easy to introduce binary incompatibility due to the implementation of traits. If you look at other production programming environments, from C# to Objective-C, the maintainers bend over backwards to maintain binary and API compatibility across releases because it's bloody expensive to upgrade everything in lock-step, force all your customers to upgrade, wait for all your vendors to upgrade, and move the entire ecosystem to a new version in one gigantic step. At some point you need to say, enough is enough, we're going to upgrade out and people will have to make minor changes to their source code to get the new features. They had 7 release candidates, so they've made a commitment to quality and given people time to upgrade leisurely. Upgrade leisurely? To a release-candidate quality language release? Are you joking? Even if we wanted to upgrade to an RC release (and we didn't!), we'd had to wait for the libraries we depend on to be updated too (and wait for time to block development while we upgrade all internal components in lock-step).
aschobel 16y ago
Fantastic, is this release safe to run in production? I recall there being a few missteps w/ earlier releases. Actors in 2.7.4 didn't seem to be thoroughly vetted.
- sgt 16y ago
  Should be. That's what they told me in #scala on Freenode.
- jorgeortiz85 16y ago
  Scala 2.8.0 went through a very long RC process (7 RCs over the course of several months) to try to prevent a repeat of 2.7.4.
- fizx 16y ago
  We won't run it in production yet. YMMV.
joevandyk 16y ago
Someone needs to write an intro to scala that assumes no prior java experience. I know Ruby, C, C++ and others on a *nix quite well, but I have no clue about anything Java-related. This is a problem when I'm trying to figure out how to deploy a self-contained scala application.
- sreque 16y ago
  I googled for an answer to your problem and found this: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/1305 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/1305. The link basically recommends that you learn Java first :). For better or for worse, Scala relies a ton on Java, and no one has created Scala-specific tools to simplify some of these things you can already do with existing Java tools. If you want to create a self-contained jar, the following URL has people discussing how to do this with SBT and Maven: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6750 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6750. I wouldn't wish the curse of Maven on anyone, let alone someone who hasn't been force-fed it by the Java community for a while, so I'd recommend trying to learn sbt and then port the solution posted in the above link to your own sbt project. I really wish the solution were simpler, but Java tools have always focused more on server-side web deployment and have always been weaker in the area of client-side deployment.
  - ant5 16y ago
    * I wouldn't wish the curse of Maven on anyone, let alone someone who hasn't been force-fed it by the Java community for a while, so I'd recommend trying to learn sbt and then port the solution posted in the above link to your own sbt project. I really wish the solution were simpler, but Java tools have always focused more on server-side web deployment and have always been weaker in the area of client-side deployment.* I've only ever used maven for Scala projects, but I've come across this sentiment a few times -- it always strikes me as odd, given that I have very few significant maven complaints. It has all sorts of great tools for automatically fetching dependencies, and doing "the right thing" via some fairly simple conventions. It's really easy to wire up something like tomcat:run to run a war in-place -- or your own custom self-contained code. I also really like being able to have a local maven repository where we can store our own build products (and declare dependencies against them); server software like Artifactory makes this very nice: http://www.jfrog.org/products.php http://www.jfrog.org/products.php Maven isn't wonderful, but build tools never are. I don't understand why you would hate it. Why do you hate it?
frio 16y ago
Does anyone know if there are any plans to update Odersky's "Programming in Scala" book? I'm intending to buy it in order to learn Scala, but if there's a second edition pending I'd rather hold off. Alternatively, if someone knows a better community that could field this question, I'd really appreciate being pointed in that direction. One thing I've not really grokked about Scala is where to go to ask such things!
- jorgeortiz85 16y ago
  AFAIK, there are no plans to update "Programming in Scala". But most (if not all) code examples from PinS should work with Scala 2.8. The scala-user mailing list (http://listes.epfl.ch/doc_en.cgi?liste=scala-user http://listes.epfl.ch/doc_en.cgi?liste=scala-user) is the best place to ask (and get answers for) newbie Scala questions. Using the "scala" tag on StackOverflow also produces good results.
  - frio 16y ago
    Thanks for that. I've been using StackOverflow for a few simple questions, but I'll check out the mailing list too!
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Good question. If no one answers here, try asking on StackOverflow. They've had some discussions on that book, but none recent enough to answer your question. http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=programming+in+scala http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=programming+in+scala
  - gtani 16y ago
    You can probably contact authors through artima.com (I'd like to know the answer too).
gtani 16y ago
Martin Odersky's plans: http://codemonkeyism.com/scala-unfit-development/#comment-305659 http://codemonkeyism.com/scala-unfit-development/#comment-30... In fact I am about to take a leave from university and found a startup to do commercial Scala support. I am taking some of the key Scala developers with me.

68 points by fogus 16y ago

ant5 16y ago

Scala isn't perfect, but it's a great language to have on the JVM. However, the lack of API and ABI compatibility is a really big failure. I can't believe that they're shipping what is supposed to be stable software and we can't rely on our code to continue running, much less building. We had to do a fair bit of work to fix our projects' 2.8 compatibility issues, and it's causing us all sorts of grief in terms of having to do lock-step upgrades of all libraries from 2.7 to 2.8.

eeperson 16y ago
My understanding is that this release is partly intended to fix some of the earlier design mistakes before it gains too much popularity. They wanted to do this now rather than later to prevent a python3 scenario.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - sgt 16y ago
    A new release that is not entirely backwards compatible with older code. Python 3 was created to fix some of the flaws in Python 2.x.
joshhart 16y ago
Would you rather Java? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? They've put a hell of a lot of work into making everything as compatible as possible with 2.7. At some point you need to say, enough is enough, we're going to upgrade out and people will have to make minor changes to their source code to get the new features. They had 7 release candidates, so they've made a commitment to quality and given people time to upgrade leisurely.
- strlen 16y ago
  > Would you rather Java? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? ... or Perl5 for that matter. Python has continuously broken backwards compatibility in their APIs between releases and that has allowed it to shed much technical debt. It's annoying for developers, but it's better for the language and the ecosystem to keep evolving. Scala is taking the correct route here.
  - ant5 16y ago
    It's annoying for developers s/annoying/_expensive_/ but it's better for the language and the ecosystem to keep evolving. Of course it's good for things to evolve. But you're painting a false dichotomy here. Scala is taking the correct route here. In the short-term? Just once? That may be true due to just how broken some things were. In the long term? It's a very expensive thing to be breaking everyone's code and binaries.
- ant5 16y ago
  Would you rather Java? Is that a real question or were you just setting up your false dichotomy via some well-placed rhetoric? Where everything is shit because of backwards compatibility? Oh, so that's why Java is so bad? Because it has some stagnant corners in which they're maintaining backwards compatibility? That's silly. Backwards compatibility isn't holding back Java the language, or even Java the VM. Bad design decisions and an almost knee-jerk opposition to any forward progress holds Java back. You don't have to break compatibility to implement closures, you just have to herd cats until you can get people to agree on a proposal and implement it. They've put a hell of a lot of work into making everything as compatible as possible with 2.7 But it's not actually compatible. And it may not be again in the future. And it's really easy to introduce binary incompatibility due to the implementation of traits. If you look at other production programming environments, from C# to Objective-C, the maintainers bend over backwards to maintain binary and API compatibility across releases because it's bloody expensive to upgrade everything in lock-step, force all your customers to upgrade, wait for all your vendors to upgrade, and move the entire ecosystem to a new version in one gigantic step. At some point you need to say, enough is enough, we're going to upgrade out and people will have to make minor changes to their source code to get the new features. They had 7 release candidates, so they've made a commitment to quality and given people time to upgrade leisurely. Upgrade leisurely? To a release-candidate quality language release? Are you joking? Even if we wanted to upgrade to an RC release (and we didn't!), we'd had to wait for the libraries we depend on to be updated too (and wait for time to block development while we upgrade all internal components in lock-step).

aschobel 16y ago

Fantastic, is this release safe to run in production? I recall there being a few missteps w/ earlier releases. Actors in 2.7.4 didn't seem to be thoroughly vetted.

sgt 16y ago
Should be. That's what they told me in #scala on Freenode.
jorgeortiz85 16y ago
Scala 2.8.0 went through a very long RC process (7 RCs over the course of several months) to try to prevent a repeat of 2.7.4.
fizx 16y ago
We won't run it in production yet. YMMV.

joevandyk 16y ago

Someone needs to write an intro to scala that assumes no prior java experience. I know Ruby, C, C++ and others on a *nix quite well, but I have no clue about anything Java-related. This is a problem when I'm trying to figure out how to deploy a self-contained scala application.

sreque 16y ago
I googled for an answer to your problem and found this: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/1305 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/1305. The link basically recommends that you learn Java first :). For better or for worse, Scala relies a ton on Java, and no one has created Scala-specific tools to simplify some of these things you can already do with existing Java tools. If you want to create a self-contained jar, the following URL has people discussing how to do this with SBT and Maven: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6750 http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6750. I wouldn't wish the curse of Maven on anyone, let alone someone who hasn't been force-fed it by the Java community for a while, so I'd recommend trying to learn sbt and then port the solution posted in the above link to your own sbt project. I really wish the solution were simpler, but Java tools have always focused more on server-side web deployment and have always been weaker in the area of client-side deployment.
- ant5 16y ago
  * I wouldn't wish the curse of Maven on anyone, let alone someone who hasn't been force-fed it by the Java community for a while, so I'd recommend trying to learn sbt and then port the solution posted in the above link to your own sbt project. I really wish the solution were simpler, but Java tools have always focused more on server-side web deployment and have always been weaker in the area of client-side deployment.* I've only ever used maven for Scala projects, but I've come across this sentiment a few times -- it always strikes me as odd, given that I have very few significant maven complaints. It has all sorts of great tools for automatically fetching dependencies, and doing "the right thing" via some fairly simple conventions. It's really easy to wire up something like tomcat:run to run a war in-place -- or your own custom self-contained code. I also really like being able to have a local maven repository where we can store our own build products (and declare dependencies against them); server software like Artifactory makes this very nice: http://www.jfrog.org/products.php http://www.jfrog.org/products.php Maven isn't wonderful, but build tools never are. I don't understand why you would hate it. Why do you hate it?

frio 16y ago

Does anyone know if there are any plans to update Odersky's "Programming in Scala" book? I'm intending to buy it in order to learn Scala, but if there's a second edition pending I'd rather hold off. Alternatively, if someone knows a better community that could field this question, I'd really appreciate being pointed in that direction. One thing I've not really grokked about Scala is where to go to ask such things!

jorgeortiz85 16y ago
AFAIK, there are no plans to update "Programming in Scala". But most (if not all) code examples from PinS should work with Scala 2.8. The scala-user mailing list (http://listes.epfl.ch/doc_en.cgi?liste=scala-user http://listes.epfl.ch/doc_en.cgi?liste=scala-user) is the best place to ask (and get answers for) newbie Scala questions. Using the "scala" tag on StackOverflow also produces good results.
- frio 16y ago
  Thanks for that. I've been using StackOverflow for a few simple questions, but I'll check out the mailing list too!
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Good question. If no one answers here, try asking on StackOverflow. They've had some discussions on that book, but none recent enough to answer your question. http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=programming+in+scala http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=programming+in+scala
- gtani 16y ago
  You can probably contact authors through artima.com (I'd like to know the answer too).

gtani 16y ago

Martin Odersky's plans: http://codemonkeyism.com/scala-unfit-development/#comment-305659 http://codemonkeyism.com/scala-unfit-development/#comment-30... In fact I am about to take a leave from university and found a startup to do commercial Scala support. I am taking some of the key Scala developers with me.