I’d previously intended to get Databinder 1.0 out of the house before branching for Wicket 2.0. We all know how much fun it is to apply bug fixes and enhancements to multiple source trees. But then I remembered that Hibernate Annotations, responsible for about one half of Databinder’s fabulousness, has never actually been “released.”

Annotations has been camped out at 3.2.0 CR1 since May. This long pause for a mostly finished, mostly stable product is hard to figure. An ORM kidnapping—are they being held for ransom at 37signals? Or maybe they’re waiting to release the software and their new Manning book at the same time? Somebody call Martha—synergy is back!

Update: Well, well. CR2 was released between me writing and posting this; it’s in all Databinder snapshots now. “Hibernate Annotations is ready for prime time.” Yes!

It wouldn’t be too responsible to release a 1.0 Databinder that depends heavily on an unreleased version of Hibernate. So we wait. No one’s found any major bugs in 0.7, and 0.8-SNAPSHOT is chillin’ with a few minor enhancements. We’re not losing revenue here, thank God. (We’re not even sure what “revenue” is, other than the feminine past participle of revenir.)

But instead of doing nothing I’ve decided to branch for Wicket 2.0 support. And guess what the branch is called… yes, it’s r2.0. There’s a long, silly tradition in software (Java, particularly) of version number jumps. The usual excuse is to avoid “confusion.” Works for me.

2.0-SNAPSHOT, as of right now, is available at the Databinder repository and works with Wicket 2.0-SNAPSHOT builds. Compared to 0.8-SNAPSHOT, it is neither comprehensive, tested, nor documented. But it’s available because I know some Databinder users are getting antsy and I don’t want them to think we aren’t on the ball here.

But please, please, stay with <= 1.0 releases if you’re learning Wicket or working on something you might finish in the next few months. Don’t worry about “learning Wicket twice” or anything like that. Migrating to 2.0 requires a fair bit of typing but not a lot of philosophizing.

Well, there is one thing I’m puzzled about with Wicket 2.0: where did my Roles go? Eelco, did you take my Roles? I want them back. Please give me back my Roles. Until they are returned, don’t expect anything in Databinder’s authentication package to work.

How to use the Wicket and Databinder 2.0 snapshots

Or, how to make lots of extra work for yourself, and be cool.

1. Have these in your pom.xml:

   <repositories>
       <repository>
           <id>databinder-snapshots</id>
           <name>Databinder snapshot repository</name>
           <url>http://databinder.net/snapshot</url>
       </repository>
       <repository>
           <id>wicket-snapshot</id>
           <name>Wicket snapshot repository</name>
           <url>http://maven.sateh.com/wicket/</url>
       </repository>
   </repositories>  

2. Bump your Databinder version to 2.0-SNAPSHOT.

3.  mvn clean eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse \
   -Declipse.downloadSources=true

4. Open project in Eclipse.
5. Fix all those squiggly red lines. (est. time 1hr)
6. Fix all those squiggly yellow lines. (don’t plan on going out today)