Thanks @hWorblehat for staying motivated with the software model and sorry for our late reply. We have been busy figuring out the best way to communicate our next direction. With the recent development, the ordering issue is tackled differently, and the rule engine behind the software model isn’t required anymore. Don’t get us wrong; we are still fully committed to supporting strong modeling of software domain and Gradle as a polyglot build system is here to stay.
1 . What are the plans for the Software Model and rule based configuration? Is it on hold while more urgent issues are addressed, or is it looking increasingly likely that this was an experiment that will be dropped?
We realized the rule-based configuration wasn’t solving all issues we were initially trying to solve. Since its introduction, lots have changed and we are confident we don’t need such incompatible change with the current model to achieve the same benefit.
2 . Do you have any plans for how you will bring the functionality of the old and new configuration systems together.
We will backport the native ecosystem to the current model and provide a migration path for everyone using the software model plugins. With each release, we are providing better APIs for plugin author that helps them achieve similar results the rule engine was providing.
3 . Based on the answers to the above, what approach would you recommend for developing new plugins? I like the configuration-order guarantees that can be given by the Software Model, so would like to use it where possible, but don’t want to find myself in the situation of having to throw all my work away and start again in a few months time if this feature never reaches maturity.
We recommend developing new plugins using the current model. The new Provider and PropertyState API was released as part of the backporting effort. Give them a try and give us your feedback. If you are developing plugins for the native ecosystem, we recommend doing the minimal required configuration in the rule-based engine by bridging your current model extension inside the rule-based engine.
Don’t hesitate to ask more question,
Daniel