Matt RaibleMatt Raible is a Web Developer and Java Champion. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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10+ YEARS


Over 10 years ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I've authored books, had kids, traveled the world, found Trish and blogged about it all.

Moving AppFuse into the Attic

In mid-February, I decided to stop working on AppFuse. My reason was simple: I was no longer getting any value from my contributions to the project. I sent a message to the developers mailing list the next day:

Hello everyone,

Last night, I started working on AppFuse 4.0, with the following features from the roadmap:

  • Remove XML wherever possible
  • Java 8
  • Spring Boot
  • Spring Data
  • JSR 303 (might require removing or developing client-side support)

As I started removing XML and integrating Spring Boot and Spring Data, it quickly became apparent that it’d be a lot of work to make all of these changes. My guess is it’d take over 100 hours of my time to do everything. This is time I’d be taking away from my family and personal time.

At the end of last year, I wanted to make AppFuse 4.0 happen because I thought it’d help me stay up-to-date with Java technologies and learn some things along the way. As I dug into the codebase last night, I realized it’d be more of a headache than a learning experience. It seems there would be little reward for all the work.

Because there’s little-to-no activity on the mailing list these days, it seems like it’s the right time to shutdown the project and dedicate my free time to other open source endeavors. As you might know, I’m a big fan of JHipster (http://jhipster.github.io/). It combines AngularJS and Spring Boot and has all the features that AppFuse has - but with a more modern technology stack.

If we had everything hosted on GitHub, I think it’d make sense to add a line to the README that says “This project is no longer maintained”. However, since there’s a lot hosted on appfuse.org (with Confluence), it might not be that easy. Maybe it’s possible to export everything from Confluence to static HTML pages and host them somewhere with the same URLs so there’s not a bunch of 404s from shutting down the project.

Thank you for your contributions over the years. AppFuse was pretty cool back in the day, but now there’s better solutions.

Cheers,

Matt

The good news is I've worked out a deal with Contegix to keep appfuse.org up and running for the next year. The demos, documentation and bug tracker will be available until April 30, 2017. Bamboo and FishEye will be discontinued in the next week since they're too memory intensive for a smaller server. I'd love to figure out a way to export all the documentation from Confluence to Asciidoctor so everything can be on GitHub for years to come. However, there's something to be said for just letting a project fade away rather than holding onto nostalgic artifacts.

On a related note, Java.net will be closing in a year from today. AppFuse started on SourceForge, but moved to appfuse.java.net shortly after. Today, the only thing left on java.net are AppFuse's mailing lists. I suppose it makes sense that both projects will cease to exist around the same time.

AppFuse's source code will remain on GitHub. I have no plans to delete it.

Thanks to everyone that used and contributed to AppFuse over the years. It was a pretty wild and crazy ride from 2003-2007! :)

Posted in Java at Apr 28 2016, 03:40:16 PM MDT 14 Comments
Comments:

Great work!

Posted by Kok Wai on April 29, 2016 at 06:46 PM MDT #

Thanks for your work over the years. I haven't used AppFuse for 7 years, but still have enjoyed reading your blog! Congrats on the completed bus! Mick Penryn, CA

Posted by Mick Huisking on April 29, 2016 at 10:15 PM MDT #

Upon in receipt of the news of the retirement of AppFuse project, I am sad but with understanding, as your admirer. Perhaps you may come up a strategy to bridge the gap between AppFuse and your favourite-JHipster since there is still a little time to continue to support AppFuse. Of course this is my wishful thinking only! May all the force with you in your future endeavors. Cheers Matt! from Sam Lee who lives in New York, Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Posted by Sam Lee on April 30, 2016 at 09:50 AM MDT #

Great work Matt. I left college when Appfuse was kicking off and used it as my starter project for many years. I learned so much from appfuse around modern java development and had fun debugging and figuring things out. Like your self I have moved on towards jhipster promoting it to my younger guys who join my team (how things change) You have been a great Mentor and its been fun.

Posted by Redd on May 03, 2016 at 06:02 PM MDT #

Hey Matt - echo Redd. Appfuse played a huge part of me learning Java and on to large web applications. Used it many times to kick off new clients as well as anytime a PoC was needed for any new technology.

Posted by Chris Blackburn on May 12, 2016 at 03:36 AM MDT #

Hi Matt, I have been following you since 2009 and I learned a lot on AppFuse so thank you for that and God bless you. Thanks, Lino

Posted by Lino Yabut on May 12, 2016 at 04:44 PM MDT #

Congrats Matt, on one of first and most successful open source projects.

Posted by Daniel Hinojosa on May 24, 2016 at 06:53 PM MDT #

The end of an era. I've used AppFuse for several production grade applications, I have used it to train new developers as well. Salute to you Matt for an awesome product. Here is to a race well ran.

Posted by ET MOGASWA on May 30, 2016 at 10:49 AM MDT #

I was just giving AppFuse a big rap to a colleage of mine and told him he had to take a look at it.

I hadn't been to the site in a while. Now reading this news of it's ending had to write and say many thanks. I think I could write my own book on how much value I got out of AppFuse and where it has served me well on many a project.

It's definitely made it's mark in the industry and helped everyone from student to old hack.

Matt Raible, you da man!

Posted by Matt on June 01, 2016 at 05:37 AM MDT #

I want to thank you for your efforts and your quality that you put in AppFuse. I used AppFuse in two important projects during my professional career. A big thank you and I wish you a very good time with your family

Posted by Marouane on March 24, 2017 at 09:46 PM MDT #

Thanks for share appfuse during thesse years. it's sound sad to stop,and I understand. wish your family with you get more happy time.

Posted by Roy on March 25, 2017 at 03:40 PM MDT #

Matt, I am your big fan, used Appfuse in many projects. Thanks a lot for your great work. I learnt a lot from Appfuse and educated 50+ engineers using this. God bless you and your family. I will follow you in your next endeavours..

Posted by Kodiswaran Babu Janardhanan on April 28, 2017 at 06:03 PM MDT #

Sometimes evolution is sad, I am a strong advocate of AppFuse. The go to bootstrap for my java projects. But haven't had java projects lately. Just now, doing maintenance and adding new features to an old project is that I learned the news. AppFuse is a great tool, it will be missed. Thanks Matt for all your work and dedication.

Posted by Juan Pablo on June 06, 2017 at 03:38 AM MDT #

That's sad news! I am a big fan of appfuse and always encouraged people to use it for many years. I have used appfuse to bootstrap several commercial projects which are still running. Fashion things such as the hexagonal or onion architecture were a long time ago implemented in Appfuse so kudos for being ahead of your time. Thank you Matt for all the learning!

Posted by Oscar Perez on June 07, 2017 at 10:14 AM MDT #

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