Status Update - API Release Edition (Not the usable server)

In some parts of the world, it is still the 30th and still technically November. As such we have kept our promise of releasing the Sponge API during November!

We’re at the sunset of November, but don’t worry, Sponge is as strong as ever. In fact, this past November we contributed more code to the API than October and September, combined. See this pretty Github contributions graph:

graph

And we’ve completed all PRs and issues in our 1.0 github milestone:

milestone

API 1.0 Release

The API is almost in a finalized state, as you can see from the contributions winding down. Over the past few weeks major additions have been made to the API, such as entities, events, text, as well as other important APIs to help developers make their plugins.

In light of that fact, we have decided to release 1.0 and declare the all current API to be ‘stable’. This means that most interfaces and methods won’t change as we consider them complete; however, there may still be some slight changes and fixes for plugin developers to adapt to.

We’ve also released Javadocs in a temporary location on github pages: http://spongepowered.github.io/SpongeAPI/.

In order for server administrators to use the amazing plugins the community creates there needs to be server software to run those plugins with. Sponge, the implementation for the Sponge API, is being worked on as well, and will be released as soon as possible. This part of the development process is more complicated and was put on hold until the API was more finalized and Forge for 1.8 was released as both of those things are dependencies for the implementation. However, now that we have a stable API release and Forge 1.8 we are able to start working on the Sponge implementation and we will be sure to give out a timeline.

Rolling Releases

Some parts of the API that were deemed “non-essential” have been moved back to the 1.1 release or further. This includes NBT, inventory, permissions, chat channels, and databasing. This is because we have adapted a “rolling release” model due to our rather unique situation.

In a nutshell, developing some parts of the API without having a stable implementation or testing ground is near-impossible. However, we don’t want to delay release of the API either because that delays plugin developers from using the API and giving feedback. A rolling release solves both of these problems. By making releases less stable and more incremental, we are able to make more of them, more rapidly, as we receive suggestions and discover problems when doing the implementation.

After several rolling releases(we project up to v1.5 or further) the server API will be declared stable in its entirety. Plugin developers can expect these features to change or be added before then:

  • Events
  • Inventory
  • NBT
  • Permissions
  • Simple database support

What does this mean for Sponge plugins?

Developers can start making Sponge plugins now if they want to. The current API will not change too drastically from this point on. As mentioned previously, some non-essential features have been pushed back until the v1.1 release and further, we believe that the v1.0 release should 80% of everything a developer requires to build a plugin.

Please see the Plugin Workspace Guide to learn how to set up a workspace for developing plugins. This will be moved to the documentation once that is up.

Forge Status

As many of you know, Minecraft Forge for 1.8 has been released in a beta state(do not be confused, however, because FML 1.8 was released in September). This is good news for Sponge, as it allows us to power on with the implementation. With the API in a stable state, work on the Forge implementation can begin. Due to Forge being in a Beta state and the Implementation being in an Alpha state, we strongly recommend that you do not attempt to run Sponge in a production environment until we officially release a “Beta” version of Sponge due to instabilities with both projects at the current time.

77 Likes

Woot woot. I’m glad we made it. The last week or so has certainly been filled with work and discussion.

3 Likes

I take it this means no MySQL support until a little more down the line?

Also, thanks for the hard work and keeping us informed, Sponge team. :smile:

Cool that you were able to keep your promise! I’m looking forward to see what the future holds :smile:

Finally! Glad to see the project has made it this far, me and the people on my dev team will surely be happy! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Great news!

Have you considered using git tags to mark version releases? I think it would be useful, and github has nice support for it (https://github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeAPI/releases)

Finally! Though Im quite disappointed inventories will have to wait for a later date :confused: but this is good news (y)

Thank you guys very much!! Proud that we’ve made it this far, and I can’t even wait to see what the future holds for us in this amazing project.

+! Support

Great, I cannot wait for the non-essential update, most of the plugins I have to port over used databasing and inventories.

Great work guys, can’t wait for implementation :smiley:

Inventory is a priority. Databasing doesn’t have to be integrated.

6 Likes

Français:
Bonjour,
Sponge a été annoncé comme étant une alternative a craftbukkit ?
Comment installer sponge pour ouvrire un serveur de teste public en France ?

Cordialement
Anglais :

hello,
Sponge was announced as an alternative to CraftBukkit?
How to install sponge-open an public test server in France?

Best Regards

I can start coding sponge plugins? Mandatory woo-hoo!

Great work, scanning over the api everything looks really well documented. Glad to see excellent progress is being made :slight_smile:

Yay good news are always nice to hear ^^
Hope the implementation doesn’t take too long from now :smiley:

I have been following the release of Sponge, however I don’t know everything about it.

I am a developer and I would like to move from Bukkit to Sponge however I have one question.

With the release of the API, I can code a plugin, but I can not test it? Because the Sponge release to run a server isn’t ready? Is this correct or am I misunderstanding something?

Also are we going to have a plugin release forum? I don’t mind making a few test plugins and sharing them (code) with the community. Things that aren’t included like chat channels (plugin) and sql support (api).

Great news i can’t whit tell the full server is out but as of now i’m going to start port all of my plugins!!

1 Like

Great news and great progress. It is truly exciting to see this coming along so quickly.

Bonjour!

I’m afraid Sponge is not released yet. This is only the API release, for plugins to be developed off of, the server mod itself is still being developed.

Regretter, :confused:
Bonne journee!

I hope the database won’t be Mysql. I find MongoDB a lot better.
Other than that, I’m gonna wait a day or 2 for some tutorials to crop up.

Otherwise, AWESOME

1 Like