Cheers - fabric8 Camel Maven Plugin to validate Camel endpoints from source code

Today I recorded a 12 minute video to demonstrate the new fabric8 camel-maven-plugin that is able to validate all your Camel endpoints from the source code. This allows to ensure your endpoints are valid before you run your Camel applications or unit tests. And it helps you catch those type errors or if you use invalid values for the options and so on.

video of fabric8 camel-maven-plugin in action

The fabric8 camel-maven-plugin can be run from within your Java editor as I demonstrate in the video, and of course from the command line. The plugin is able to parse both XML and Java code (the latter uses Eclipse JDT). So should be useful for all schools of Camel users.

We hope to improve on the plugin to have tighter integration in the editors such as IDEA and Eclipse, so you can have in-place Camel endpoint validation and code assistance while typing your Camel endpoints. We are working together with the JBoss Forge team to add the necessary hooks and apis that allows this plugin and the Camel forge commands to tie into that. 

Cheers and have a beer its the weekend soon, and yesterday Apache Camel 2.16.2 and hawtio 1.4.60 was released. That is a good excuse for grabbing a beer or a glass of wine.

Apache Camel and other ESB products (Camel vs Mule) - 5 years later

Yesterday Raul Kripalani (a fellow Camel rider) posted a tweet:

Shoutout to @davsclaus & #Camel riders! Just added a reflection upon the last 5y on this SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3792519/apache-camel-and-other-esb-products/34818263#34818263 …. Have a look!

The tweet refers to an old question on stackoverflow about the Apache Camel versus other ESB, and this question is in particular about Camel vs Mule.

The question was asked in September 2010, and now fast forward 5+ years Raul took a look at the situation today. I think his detailed answer is worth attention for users of Camel, and others who are doing assessment on integration software.

Rauls answer starts out as shown below. I suggest to go read his post - after you have finished reading this blog ;). And you are welcome to use the upvote ;)

I think Raul has some major points to point out about the difference between Camel and Mule.

The key differentiator I see is, the non technical aspects, Apache Camel is:

• 100% truly open source
• Open community
• Everything is discussed and happening in the open
• Anyone can participate (and become a committer)
• No control of a single vendor
• All branding and marks belongs to ASF
• ASF is a non-profit foundation where companies cannot control it
• All code is open source and ASL licensed (no open-core/community vs enterprise model)
• No vendor lock-in

An maybe overlocked fact is that the branding and marks of Apache Camel belongs to the ASF foundation. So no commercial company can "take the brand" and run with it. Neither Red Hat or Talend etc. can create a product called Red Hat Camel, Talend Camel ESB etc or some variation of the project name. Apache Camel is the authentic project.

Other projects may encounter such a problem. For example docker is very famous brand today, and there is no neutral foundation that owns that brand, the brand is owned by docker.inc (the company). So IMHO there is an interest of conflict with the brand name and docker.com the commercial company.

Another important aspect of Apache Camel (and ASF projects) is that there is no open-core/community vs enterprise model. At Apache Camel we would never deceive the community, for example by learning which Camel components that are the most popular and remove the source code from the community version and put that under a different license in a closed-source enterprise only product.

We from the Apache Camel project do neither spread/post FUD and eschewed marketing stunts on the Apache Camel website, unlike Mulesoft, where they are doing that by posting their controversial Mule vs Camel post on their commercial website. The piece of material smells of corporate bullshit, and no true honest developer would write such a piece of ...  (excuse my english)

And a final note Its also worth referring people to the previous blog, which also spun from a tweet where you can easily compare projects on blackduck, such as Camel vs Mule.

With Apache Camel it is all about the community, for the community, and all work is done in the open. Anyone can participate and we love contributions.

Roll on 2016 its going to be another great year for the Camels.