Jiffle leaves home to grow up

Although it's usually the other way around (grow up then leave home) sometimes things don't turn out as planned...

For Jiffle, the scripting language developed as part of JAI-tools, what was originally planned was compatibility with the r.mapcalc raster algebra language used in GRASS GIS, but recently we decided that this was too limiting and it would be better to set Jiffle free and have its development driven purely by our brilliant ideas (plus the moderating influence of user feedback).

Like all great ambitions, this one quickly ran aground on the rocks of practical constraint. Being a module in a Maven-based project, Jiffle had the same version number as all of the other JAI-tools modules, but this didn't fit well with allowing Jiffle's syntax and code-base to be more fluid (ie. lots of changes breaking backwards-compatibility). So it was decided to separate Jiffle out from the JAI-tools project.

Jiffle now has its own site: http://code.google.com/p/jiffle/ and it's been re-versioned to 0.1.x to make it clear to users that substantial changes can be expected. Despite leaving home, Jiffle will retain its close relationship to JAI-tools, with the same project team developing both.

Unfortunately, this has created a certain amount of version chaos. At Maven Central you can find:

• jt-jiffle-1.1.0.jar (as part of the most recent JAI-tools release)
• jiffle-1.0.1.jar (from the previous release before the "jt-" prefix was adopted)
• And soon: jt-jiffle-language-0.1.0.jar (the new jar name being required to avoid future clashes with previous versions)

It's hard to see how we could have made it much more confusing.

Here's what to do:

• For JAI-tools version 1.1.0, use jt-jiffle-1.1.0
• With later JAI-tools releases, swap over to the most recent version of jt-jiffle-language

If you you use Maven as your build tool it will cut through much of this confusion for you because the dependency relationship between different versions of JAI-tools and Jiffle will be contained in each project's pom.xml file.

The next post will show off some of the new Jiffle language features to prove that all of this chaos has been worth it :)