Random Thoughts

SpringSource just released Milestone 1.0.0.M2 of Roo, their developer productivity tool. It's 'getting better all the time', to quote a Beatles tune.

I was about to set aside some time to go over the internals of SpringSource's Roo and blog about it, but the creator, Ben Alex, beat me to the punch. Read his article on the SpringSource blog.

One interesting part of Roo for me is how you can start by scaffolding the UI pages, and then stop and manually customize things. There is an annotation on the Controller like this:

@RooWebScaffold(automaticallyMaintainView = true, 
   formBackingObject = Conference.class)

The key item here is the automaticallyMaintainView entry.  If set to false, Roo no longer generates and replaces the jsp code.  Which means that you can start by scaffolding the view, and then stop and customize it to your heart's content.

Also the Eclipse AJDT plugin apparently has a 'push generation' feature that will turn all aspect-driven code into actual classes, and remove your dependency on Roo altogether.  This is important, as you can use Roo to get started, get work done, and eventually part with it if need be.

Interesting stuff to watch going forward.