Velocity > 1.5 can't parse default-site.vm

Later feedback from the Velocity list suggest that your template probably doesn't work with Velocity 1.5 either, it just doesn't fail as spectacular as it does with Velocity 1.7.

The suggestion from the Velocity developers list is to upgrade your dependency to 1.7 and double the quotes. See http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/velocity-dev/201008.mbox/%3CAANLkTikWYWKrE=WT4UM7RWVa=EcuTap2=JS+Hetc4eSC@mail.gmail.com%3E

Velocity 1.7 doesn't seem to be available on central yet? I tried with 1.6.4, got some errors that I fixed by replacing things like

replaceAll( "\\", "/" )

by

replaceAll( '\\', '/' )

but no problem with the line you quote above.

Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm not a velocity developer and not a doxia user, I'm just an observer and maybe a messenger between velocity and doxia. 8-)

I see Velocity 1.7-beta1 inside the central repo (groupId is org.apache.velocity now) and don't think there is a final release, yet.

The feedback I received from the velocity developers is that while the parser may have accepted your template with older versions, it likely never has done what you intended it to do. If you now tell me that it works for you, I don't know how to respond to that. Quotes cannot be escaped by \ in Velocity templates.

it likely never has done what you intended it to do.

Please substantiate this statement with a test case that demonstrates the difference, otherwise I don't know what we are talking about. The current default-site.vm has been used by every single maven user that has ever run the 'site' goal. And there are many maven-generated sites out there...

Lukas, I fully understand your sentiment and in fact this is what I'd ask if anybody reported a bug that I cannot reproduce in my projects as well. The problem here is, I am not a Doxia user, nor a Maven user - I wouldn't even know where to start if I tried to provide a test.

Let's take this a few steps backwards.

First, this is what the template reads:

        #set ( $documentHeader = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>" )
        #set ( $documentHeader = $documentHeader.replaceAll( "\\", "" ) )

The first line tries to create an XML declaration with double-quotes and tries to escape the double-quotes with a backslash. The Velocity developers say backslashes have never worked as escape character for double-quotes in string literals and I trust them. At least they don't work in Velocity 1.7.

The second line strips backslashes. If the backslash escaping of the first line worked, there wouldn't be any backslash in $documentHeader and the line was unneeded. I take this as a hint that the first line really doesn't work as expected and the second line is a workaround to get what you really wanted.

The first approach suggested to me (in the initial description) using $Q is supposed to work with any version of Velocity, doubling the double-quotes may require a newer version of Velocity. Either approach should make the second line unnessary,

The current template doesn't work with Velocity 1.7 since they now use an explicit grammer and ANTLR and the template violates the grammar - see http://vmgump.apache.org/gump/public/doxia/doxia-site-renderer-test/gump_work/build_doxia_doxia-site-renderer-test.html for a more isolated test.

I don't know how else I could help, in particular since I'm not affected by the problem myself at all.

Stefan, I appreciate your efforts and feedback in spite the fact you are not even affected by the problem I am just trying to figure out whether we should be concerned at all. It obviously works with the velocity version we are using (1.5), so the question is whether it's worth upgrading? I can confirm that with Velocity 1.7-beta1 I get your error message, but not with any other version. I also noted that the following works with any version:

#set ( $documentHeader = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>' )

ie single quotes outside and no escaping of double quotes. That seems like the most logical alternative for me. But then again, if things change with every new version of velocity, then I am reluctant to upgrade anyway if there is no other good reason...

I agree single quotes are a natural solution.

Whether it is worth upgrading, I don't know. It's not as if upgrading from Doxia 1.0 to 1.1 would be painless

More seriously,the reason I went to the Velocity developer list first was that I intended to get a backwards incompatibility fixed before the final release. In this case I think the Velocity devs have a point, though, in that the current template simply isn't really correct.

Gump is intended to be there to catch this type of changes before they become final, it is just that not enough projects are actively participating to make it a success.

I have fixed the script in r984014.
However, I have not actually upgraded the velocity version, the reason being that the script shipped with the published stylus-skin is also not compatible (see r984016), so people wouldn't be able to use the old skin. Let me know if this helps anything.

This has fixed the Gump build of doxia-site-renderer. It won't help with the other problems until the Maven plugins Cactus and other projects use have been updated, but this is not your business.

As for the "fix version", I assumed trunk is going to be 1.2 one day.

Thanks Lukas

Current trunk is 1.1.4-snap so I changed the fix for. Don't know if/when we will release 1.2. Thanks!