HornetQ and ActiveMQ strategy?

[dpocock]

I tried to reply in the topic about the 2.5.0.Beta1 but the forum is broken and won't let me.  It tells me I may have reached some limit but I have only posted once in the last 24 hours, that was my question yesterday.

Thanks for the feedback about the beta, just to clarify, people should not be testing the 2.5.0.Beta1 tag at all then?

I understand you may not be keen to commit to a release date, but could you maybe provide some rough comments on some of the following:

If somebody starts a new project today, should they use the last stable HornetQ release or the last stable ActiveMQ release?

Will there be changes to ActiveMQ to make it more friendly for code that works against HornetQ?  E.g. ActiveMQ has some different names for some of the MBeans (like message count), will it emulate the JMX names used by HornetQ or will I need to tweak all my JMXetric config files?  I notice that STOMP clients also need to use a slightly different syntax for queue names with ActiveMQ, will it try to emulate the HornetQ naming conventions or will STOMP client code need to be modified?

I notice HORNETQ-1383 was fixed in 2.5.0.Beta1 and backported to 2.3.x but not 2.4.x.  Is the 2.4.x branch going to be supported for any period of time?

For people who do continue using the HornetQ code base, will you still accept small bug fixes and things through Github pull requests and roll them up into maintenance releases?  Or will it be completely abandoned?

I did some testing with the beta yesterday and I encountered an issue with authentication, JMS was always giving me "HT119031:Unable to validate user: guest" or "HT119031:Unable to validate user: null" and STOMP clients were not able to submit anything at all.  Commenting out the <security-settings> stuff in the config and replacing it with <security-enabled>false</security-enabled> resolved the issues for both JMS and STOMP clients.  Note that with the JMS clients, I would see an exception on both the client and server log but with the STOMP client there was no error logged.

[jbertram]

Thanks for the feedback about the beta, just to clarify, people should not be testing the 2.5.0.Beta1 tag at all then?

That's correct.  What would have been HornetQ 2.5.0.Final will now be ActiveMQ 6.0.0.Final (of course which other changes for re-branding and legacy client support, etc.).

If somebody starts a new project today, should they use the last stable HornetQ release or the last stable ActiveMQ release?

ActiveMQ 6 will be more like HornetQ than it will be like ActiveMQ 5 in terms of features, design, and performance.  Therefore, if you want the most continuity between what you deploy today and what you would deploy in the future via ActiveMQ 6 then I suggest you use the latest stable release of HornetQ.

Will there be changes to ActiveMQ to make it more friendly for code that works against HornetQ?  E.g. ActiveMQ has some different names for some of the MBeans (like message count), will it emulate the JMX names used by HornetQ or will I need to tweak all my JMXetric config files?  I notice that STOMP clients also need to use a slightly different syntax for queue names with ActiveMQ, will it try to emulate the HornetQ naming conventions or will STOMP client code need to be modified?

Our goal is for ActiveMQ 6 to support both legacy ActiveMQ and HornetQ clients.

Specifically in terms of management beans and STOMP naming conventions I would expect those to be closer to what HornetQ uses today.  However, all references to "org.hornetq" will be replaced with "org.apache.activemq" which includes MBean names.

I notice HORNETQ-1383 was fixed in 2.5.0.Beta1 and backported to 2.3.x but not 2.4.x.  Is the 2.4.x branch going to be supported for any period of time?

I wouldn't expect 2.4.x to receive any new features.  There won't be any "official" support for either 2.4.x or 2.5.x from Red Hat through EAP since neither of those branches have or will be productized.  Community support will likewise be focused elsewhere (i.e. ActiveMQ 6).

For people who do continue using the HornetQ code base, will you still accept small bug fixes and things through Github pull requests and roll them up into maintenance releases?  Or will it be completely abandoned?

Anyone is certainly free to submit PRs to the HornetQ GitHub project and if they are deemed appropriate I expect they will be merged, but I wouldn't expect any further HornetQ releases as such.  Development of the code-base will carry on the form of ActiveMQ 6.  Of course, that won't stop you from building HornetQ yourself (which is pretty simple).