Is it time to write Arquillian 2.0 using Ceylon instead of Java?

[kpiwko]

With Ceylon announcement - http://ceylon-lang.org/blog/2013/11/12/ceylon-1/, I was thinking about following:

If Arquillian 2.0 is written in Ceylon, we could get:

* Some nice features for writing Core itself from Ceylon languages - lambda

* Generated Java code

* Generated JavaScript code

* Arquillian Support in Ceylon

* some help from Ceylon team?

We could loose:

* developers from upstream

As Java and JavaScript code would be generated, we'd need to write some nice native Java and JavaScript API. However, by single code base there would be a support for 3 languages.

Does this make any sense? Or would it rather be better to follow server-client model where client is written in any language while server stays in Java?

What do you guys think?

[aslak]

It's an interesting idea, tho my main concern is 'dragging the Ceylon SDK' with us every where to run..

> If Arquillian 2.0 is written in Ceylon, we could get:

> * Some nice features for writing Core itself from Ceylon languages - lambda

Sure, we could get some sugar, but also eliminate anything pre 1.7 jvm

> * Generate Java code

yeah, but we still need the Ceylon SDK.

> * Generated JavaScript code

True, but what would we do with Arq Core in JS?

I can see parts of a client running in JS communicating with a backend, or possible JS running on the JVM...

Unless you're just talking about Arquillian Core, and having a general test middleware for JS as we have for Java.

> * Arquillian Support in Ceylon

We should in theory already support this today, as they both run on the JVM.

> * some help from Ceylon team?

More help is always good

> However, by single code base there would be a support for 3 languages.

We're basically just supporting 2 runtimes(languages) pr say.  Ceylon/Java is the same thing.

[kpiwko]

It's an interesting idea, tho my main concern is 'dragging the Ceylon SDK' with us every where to run..

> If Arquillian 2.0 is written in Ceylon, we could get:

> * Some nice features for writing Core itself from Ceylon languages - lambda

Sure, we could get some sugar, but also eliminate anything pre 1.7 jvm

Ah, I missed the point that Ceylon requires JRE7. This is probably the biggest problem imo.

> * Generate Java code

yeah, but we still need the Ceylon SDK.

Well, if we are going to use JBoss Modules, JBoss Modules + Ceylon SDK should not be that much overhead.

> * Generated JavaScript code

True, but what would we do with Arq Core in JS?

I can see parts of a client running in JS communicating with a backend, or possible JS running on the JVM...

Unless you're just talking about Arquillian Core, and having a general test middleware for JS as we have for Java.

There are plenty of options. The main point is to be able to write tests directly in JavaScript, while keeping Arquillian Starting containers etc.

We could support Node.js as an container with JavaScript deployment or JavaScript tests for iOS, where we could use iOS simulator .

The point here is that Java Language starts to be limiting point for non Java users but maintaining too much code in JavaScript is a difficult task.

> * Arquillian Support in Ceylon

We should in theory already support this today, as they both run on the JVM.

I like "in theory" part :-)

> * some help from Ceylon team?

More help is always good

Agreed. :-)