Scala Platform Process in 2018

Hey there Scala Community!

2018 has just started and so everyone at the Scala Center is back to work. We’re all planning our projects, gathering feedback and coordinating our efforts so that Scala in 2018 is superior to the one we met in 2017. We’re aiming for better tooling, improved ergonomics, higher language adoption and (even) more Community involvement than our past years! Here are a couple of points: where we stand and where we want to go.

Scala Platform 1.0 release, March 2018

We’re currently chatting with the Scala Platform module maintainers to organise an official release planned for the beginning of March 2018!

The first release will make Scala JSON AST and better-files available to all the Community, and we will work on the build tools’ integrations (sbt, Maven and Gradle) for users to depend on them (with a fairly general mechanism to allow both full-platform and per-module dependencies).

Another important aspect of this release is library modularisation, given that Scala 2.13 is around the corner. The topic discussed in this forum had a great reaction already!

As it is an important initiative, we’ll have a special focus on it during the next months.

We would also like that SP experience and the tooling that gets created to be reusable by other Community platforms, providing best practices and a strong foundation to build upon. That is what inspires us: to make sure that the Scala Platform —our take for a “stable collection of libraries with widespread use and a low barrier to entry for beginners and intermediate users”— succeeds.

We wish to hear from you: how to achieve our goals, how we can make the tooling more robust, please comment below!

Supporting the maintainers - Integrating with OpenCollective

Fact is - we all benefit from FLOSS Scala software, and know that all these Scala libraries rely on the network of hard working volunteers — maintainers aiming to improve its quality and documentation.

The love, passion and belief of Scala maintainers is a driving source, but it should come as no surprise that they could use an incentive to keep up the great work. We take is as a mission to support them in various ways and give back some of what we get from their contributions.

In that spirit, we’d like propose to add an easy way for both individuals and organizations to connect and back the development of Scala Platform modules.

The idea is simple: connecting the maintainers and the organizations that depend on modules in production ensuring the continuity of the library development and getting their name stand out, as described in the Scala Platform docs.

Concretely, I’d like to add an OpenCollective page for every Scala Platform module. OpenCollective is an organization that connects maintainers and backers (similar to what Patreon is). The Platform is getting traction, and some projects are already using it. These are some examples:

Please, let us know what you think about this idea! :love_you_gesture:

I want to help!

We appreciate each and every contribution! :yellow_heart:

The Scala Platform is an initiative coordinated by the Scala Center but mainly driven by our Community. If you want to help, there are many tasks you can help on. From docs to testing and tackling issues in our current Scala Platform modules. Check the issue trackers of Scala JSON AST and better-files and pick up a ticket to work on!

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