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Seeing that Velocity's latest stable version was released at least two years ago, I was hoping the good people at SF would be able to suggest if this project is still actively maintained. I can see no hint to this other then a Velocity 2.0 project on JIRA that does not seem to have any activity.

c.f. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11085676/does-apache-velocity-project-have-future-or-is-it-defunct that was closed for some reason.

UPDATE (JUL 2017): New version 2.0 up at http://velocity.apache.org/engine/2.0/

Nir Levy
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    How long a wait before you're convinced that the answer is "no"? What else needs to be added to a templating solution? Why not another choice like FreeMarker? – duffymo Jul 04 '13 at 11:37
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because such temporary questions are a bad fit for SO. Yesterday the answer was "no" (maybe?), today it's "yes". Answers to SO questions shouldn't change by the day. – deceze Jul 04 '17 at 09:34
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    I don't know much about the rules regarding SO, but this is exactly one of the kinds of questions about software engineering that I think only SO has a large enough community to be able to answer... Getting a vote of what other developers think about a project as a whole, especially an important factor, such as "is it maintained". – yegeniy Dec 13 '17 at 19:43

6 Answers6

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Is GNU sed still an active project? The last release was 4.2.2 in December 2012, and before that 4.2.1 in June 2009, and 4.1.5 in 2006. Also, the maintainer announced his resignation from maintaining the project. Does that mean that GNU sed is a dead project that shouldn't be used anymore? Definitely not. It is a very mature project, with very few bugs and little left to improve or innovate. It is a well known piece of program, used in many scripts, and just because releases happen every 3 years or more, it doesn't mean that it is something to move away from. On the contrary, sed is a central piece of *nix utilities, and GNU sed is probably its best implementation.

While Apache Velocity is not as mature and well known as GNU sed, it is also a mature, stable software. There isn't much work being done not because there's nobody left to do that work, but because there's very little need of new work. Developers are happy with what they have, users don't complain of missing features, and downstream projects are happy, as far as I know.

Sergiu Dumitriu
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    First, thanks for the detailed reply. Second, I think that the analogy is misleading: `sed` is a well established tool, `velocity` is a common library. Also, if I would be building a brand new system I would hardly use `sed` as my main building block. However, I get your point and will take this into my considerations. So thanks again. – Nir Levy Jul 10 '13 at 06:27
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    Git history at https://apache.googlesource.com/velocity-engine/ shows that @Sergiu remains sole commiter over last two years. Could you clarify on trunk's stability status and any plans for release, please? – Vadzim Jul 03 '15 at 16:39
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It looks like the Apache Velocity community are working towards a 2.x release at some point (although I don't think there's a scheduled release date)

This link shows recent commit activity... I'd say it's active

Edd
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Yes, it is active.

Velocity 2.0 is now available. According to The Central Repository for Maven, the 2.0 velocity-master artifact was last updated 14 October 2016.

The current (as of 8 May 2017) version is 2.1-SNAPSHOT indicating that work towards the next release is in progress.

Further, the git commit log show quite recent activity. The latest commit, at the time of writing, is from April 14 2017, and quite a few commits have been made in 2017.

Having said this, the Apache home page for Velocity doesn't seem to be kept up to date. There is no mention on the main page about the 2.0 release, however the Apache page for Velocity Engine 2.0 has its own (secret) page on the Apache site.

Rahim Khoja
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Magnilex
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While the existing answers are very useful, you may find OpenHub (previously called OhLoh) a useful resource for this kind of question. https://www.openhub.net/p/velocity

yegeniy
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BTW, they apparently switched to git:

https://github.com/apache/velocity-engine

https://apache.googlesource.com/velocity-engine

Links show faint recent activity.

Vadzim
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Here is the Apache link to the Velocity 2.0 Engine :

http://velocity.apache.org/engine/2.0/

Rahim Khoja
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