[Psc] Details about GeoExt 2.0 sprint on the dev list

[Andreas Hocevar]

Hi,

I would like to ask for approval to post the following information to
the dev list. This is a fact sheet that was sent out by terrestris,
Mapgears, Camptocamp and OpenGeo to clients that had expressed
interest in funding for making GeoExt work with Ext JS 4.x, and to
keep the GeoExt community sane the idea has been brought up to make
more public what happens behind the scenes.

Please also suggest changes if you feel it is good to make this effort
public, but not exactly this way:

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Subject: Planned GeoExt 2.0 Sprint for Ext JS 4.x compatibility

Ext JS 4.x has been available for a while now, and GeoExt 1.x only
works with Ext JS 3.x. With new attractive features in Ext JS 4.x
(e.g. charting, harmonized API with Sencha Touch for mobile
applications), users demand a GeoExt version that works with Ext JS
4.x. This sprint is about working on such a version. Let’s give it the
working title “GeoExt 2.0”.

Four organizations involved in the development of GeoExt have
expressed interest in getting together for a code sprint to make
GeoExt work with Ext JS 4.x: Camptocamp and OpenGeo are two of the
founding organizations of GeoExt, with core committers that maintain
the project. terrestris has experience in implementing geo-related
features on top of Ext JS 4 and Sencha Touch. They also have developed
gxm, a flavor of GeoExt that works on mobile devices, an effort that
was reviewed by GeoExt core committers. Mapgears is a solution
provider delivering applications based on GeoExt. They have
contributed many features to GeoExt, and maintain several user
extensions.

The goal of the sprint is to release a preliminary version of GeoExt
2.0, which will immediately be available to the community and funding
organizations, but may not yet have all the features from GeoExt 1.x.

The Ext JS 4.x API is different from the one in previous versions, so
a natural consequence of this is that GeoExt 2.0 can not be fully API
compatible with GeoExt 1.x.

terrestris, MapGears, Camptocamp and OpenGeo have come up with an
estimated funding requirement of US$ 52,000, which covers the costs of
up to 8 developers getting together for focused work on GeoExt 2.0 for
5 days. The budget includes travel costs, accommodation and food, and
a share of the costs of the development hours (the rest of the
development hours will be covered by the 4 organizations).

Funding organizations may communicate their priorities for GeoExt 1.x
features they want ported to 2.0. These priorities will be considered,
but fulfillment cannot be guaranteed, due to dependencies on other
features that require more work to be ported.

A date for the sprint can be set as soon as the commitment from
funding organizations sums up to the amount of US$ 52,000. We hope
that the sprint can happen some time between now and April 2012.
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-- 
Andreas Hocevar
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/
Expert service straight from the developers.