I'm working on a small bugfix release for StructureMap I promised a user this week. You can see the open bug list on the SourceForge page (if you have a SourceForge account you can always log bugs to a project). The big fix/enhancement that's been asked for on a couple occasions is deeper support for generic types in StructureMap. Specifically, people are asking for the ability to do something like this:
IDao<IThing,int> dao =
ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IDao<IThing,int>>();
I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work, so I'll probably post some ideas to the StructureMap mailing list on possible syntax for configuration.
How about .Net 1.1 Support?
Where I'm definitely indecisive is continued support for the .Net 1.1 version. I'll definitely make a new release of the 1.1 version with some of the bugfixes, but beyond that, I suspect that the .Net 2.0 version becomes the trunk for all future enhancements. With the additional generics support, the two codebases are going to start to diverge rapidly. Any opinions? I'm happy to keep supporting .Net 1.1, but I'm not wild about the multiple code branches.
How's everybody else dealing with this on their open source projects?
Next Functional Release
The definite theme for the next release is ease of use. Josh Flanagan and I have been talking about creating a new alternative configuration scheme that would be easier to use and hide some of the gritty details about the internal model that shines through in the current XML configuration. I'm watching Ayende's work on Binsor as a possible inspiration.
Other features being kicked around:
- Expanded attribute usage
- A programmatic way to register types, assemblies, and instance configurations at runtime. This is partially with an eye towards running StructureMap without any external configuration
- Flexibility in locating the StructureMap configuration. Either to a section in the Application config file or something altogether different. This will probably be a plugin model.
- ObjectFactory will be made into a templated class to make it easier to create your own custom facade classes for StructureMap
Feedback is welcome and appreciated.