Friday, September 11, 2009

Introducing the Bitumen framework

Bitumen framework is a collection of Open Source libraries to make application development on the Java Virtual Machine easier. It fully supports Java and Clojure for now, and other JVM languages may be supported in the future.

Bitumen tries to ease the development in a non-invasive way. Each library may be used independent of each other. In some cases however, there may be inter-dependency. Another fact is Bitumen libraries are (and will remain) XML-free. There is easy-to-use API, which you can integrate with your preferred style of configuration.

The Bitumen framework is hosted here: http://code.google.com/p/bitumenframework/

Why another framework?
I was not being able to make web development suck less with the existing Open Source projects. So, I took on this task and the result is Bitumen framework. Take a look at the libraries - there might be something you would find useful.

What are the libraries available?
Jettify - Tiny wrapper to easily embed the Jetty servlet container
JWebMVC - A minimalistic, REST-compatible servlet based web framework
More libraries are planned.

What is with this name? (Asked by Deepak)
Bitumen is used for making roads, hopefully this resembles "foundational". :-)

I am interested - I want to talk.
Your feedback is most important. Consider joining the Discussion Group. Contributions in all forms are most welcome.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Shantanu.

    You recently commented on my blog regarding Scala and Clojure.

    I'd like to ask you a general question (looks like here is the best place to do this):
    What is the benefit of using a Lisp-like language in web and enterprise applications on JVM, compared to typical imperative languages?
    Or, in other words, how do the differences of Lisps reflect in web/enterprise application development?

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  2. Hi Ivan,

    While answering your question, I realized my reply had grown so large that it deserved a dedicated blog entry. So here it is:

    http://bitumenframework.blogspot.com/2009/09/benefits-of-using-clojure-lisp-in.html

    Please feel free to ask any specific question that you have in mind, or to start a discussion on the group:

    http://groups.google.com/group/bitumenframework

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  3. Bitumen looks interesting, I would really like to see some code samples of how it makes life easier.

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  4. Hi icey,

    There are currently 2 projects under the Bitumen umbrella:
    1. Jettify at 0.1 GA is now pretty stable and usable.
    2. JWebMVC at 0.1-alpha2 is under heavy development. A Clojure extension of JWebMVC will follow soon.

    The README.txt files in respective downloads contain instructions on how to use them. I am planning to write a detailed user guide once JWebMVC reaches beta.

    Bitumen does not re-invent the wheel. Rather it strives to integrate with technologies that are useful. I will discuss such integration techniques and examples on this blog and the discussion group from time to time.

    Please feel free to explore the downloads and the discussion group.

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  5. @icey

    There is some example code in works (by others) -- expect them in few weeks. I will also try and illustrate the features with code examples in one of the later drops of JWebMVC.

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  6. Its really nice info about a Bitumen toowoomba framework is really admirable and appreciable.I would like to thanks to share such a nice blog with us.I want to be continue with your blog.


    ReplyDelete