Hello Haystack community! I have a customer that is running all of his Jaces on Niagara 4.2. It seems that there is no support for this version as far as a nHaystack module that will work!
Does anyone have a 4.2 Niagara Station nHaystack module they can share with me? Stackhub has some older versions but none of them work with 4.2. It is unfortunate that people are still running 4.2 but I cant image I am the only one with a Customer doing this??!!
It would be nice to have a Repo of all the previous versions of nHayastck modules! Much like the Skyspark Version History. Is this wishful thinking?
If someone has an nHaystack version that will work with Niagara 4.2 my email is [email protected]
Richard McElhinneyFri 8 Oct 2021
For the benefit of the community Rusty has reached out to me and we have been in touch via email. I've advised Rusty that whilst I understand there are still Niagara 4.2 Jaces and installations operating perfectly well, Niagara 4.2 has been out of official support for a number years and it is highly recommended that such installations are upgraded.
In terms of nhaystack support for Niagara 4.2 it is difficult for me personally to support such an old version of Niagara. The oldest Niagara I have installed on my laptop is 4.4U1, this version will be out of support at the end of October 2021.
As an open source project it is difficult to provide ongoing support across Niagara versions that last for years and I'm not sure it's reasonable that one person or business is responsible for doing this free of charge across all versions of Niagara.
Only a couple of people work on nhaystack and we do it in our own time, not our company time, just like many of us who actually work on Project Haystack in our own time and are not paid to do it. This is the nature of open source. We do it for the enjoyment!
The other part of open source is that the community is able to benefit from the source code and other artifacts being made available.
In this particular case, Rusty, and anyone else, is able to avail themselves of the source code and look for a Niagara Developer who is still prepared to build the source code and make it work for Niagara 4.2. This may require some modifications to the source code as there have been some changes from 4.2 to the current 4.10U1 release that will require code changes. In fact, nhaystack has changed significantly in that time.
In terms of creating a long term repository of nhaystack modules I support this idea and if the community looks at the stackhub.org entry for nhaystack they will see a number of older versions of the nhaystack module.
Rusty has compared nhaystack to the process that SkyFoundry has implemented by maintaining an extremely long term repo of built versions.
The contrast that I would like to draw is that SkyFoundry, whilst doing a fantastic job at driving forward our industry and in providing their own software, is a commercial entity that is paid by their partners to do these things. Myself and the one or two others who contribute to nhaystack are not paid and, again, we volunteer our time (willingly because we enjoy the technical challenges) to provide nhaystack.
This is not a request for funding or anything like that but it is more a request for the community to understand how nhaystack is provided and to highlight the need for contributors to the project whether it be in code, testing, documentation or, as Rusty suggests, to provide a long-term repo of built modules for all the different versions of Niagara.
Apologies for the length of this post and Rusty I hope you don't feel like I'm highlighting you personally.
I'm actually really glad you posted your question as it hopefully opens a discussion around the open source nature of Project Haystack and how it relates to our industry.
As always I'm more than happy to assist and support my work and the work of Project Haystack where I can.
Ruslan Khatman Wed 6 Oct 2021
Hello Haystack community! I have a customer that is running all of his Jaces on Niagara 4.2. It seems that there is no support for this version as far as a nHaystack module that will work!
Does anyone have a 4.2 Niagara Station nHaystack module they can share with me? Stackhub has some older versions but none of them work with 4.2. It is unfortunate that people are still running 4.2 but I cant image I am the only one with a Customer doing this??!!
It would be nice to have a Repo of all the previous versions of nHayastck modules! Much like the Skyspark Version History. Is this wishful thinking?
If someone has an nHaystack version that will work with Niagara 4.2 my email is [email protected]
Richard McElhinney Fri 8 Oct 2021
For the benefit of the community Rusty has reached out to me and we have been in touch via email. I've advised Rusty that whilst I understand there are still Niagara 4.2 Jaces and installations operating perfectly well, Niagara 4.2 has been out of official support for a number years and it is highly recommended that such installations are upgraded.
In terms of nhaystack support for Niagara 4.2 it is difficult for me personally to support such an old version of Niagara. The oldest Niagara I have installed on my laptop is 4.4U1, this version will be out of support at the end of October 2021.
As an open source project it is difficult to provide ongoing support across Niagara versions that last for years and I'm not sure it's reasonable that one person or business is responsible for doing this free of charge across all versions of Niagara.
Only a couple of people work on nhaystack and we do it in our own time, not our company time, just like many of us who actually work on Project Haystack in our own time and are not paid to do it. This is the nature of open source. We do it for the enjoyment!
The other part of open source is that the community is able to benefit from the source code and other artifacts being made available.
In this particular case, Rusty, and anyone else, is able to avail themselves of the source code and look for a Niagara Developer who is still prepared to build the source code and make it work for Niagara 4.2. This may require some modifications to the source code as there have been some changes from 4.2 to the current 4.10U1 release that will require code changes. In fact, nhaystack has changed significantly in that time.
In terms of creating a long term repository of nhaystack modules I support this idea and if the community looks at the stackhub.org entry for nhaystack they will see a number of older versions of the nhaystack module.
Rusty has compared nhaystack to the process that SkyFoundry has implemented by maintaining an extremely long term repo of built versions.
The contrast that I would like to draw is that SkyFoundry, whilst doing a fantastic job at driving forward our industry and in providing their own software, is a commercial entity that is paid by their partners to do these things. Myself and the one or two others who contribute to nhaystack are not paid and, again, we volunteer our time (willingly because we enjoy the technical challenges) to provide nhaystack.
This is not a request for funding or anything like that but it is more a request for the community to understand how nhaystack is provided and to highlight the need for contributors to the project whether it be in code, testing, documentation or, as Rusty suggests, to provide a long-term repo of built modules for all the different versions of Niagara.
Apologies for the length of this post and Rusty I hope you don't feel like I'm highlighting you personally.
I'm actually really glad you posted your question as it hopefully opens a discussion around the open source nature of Project Haystack and how it relates to our industry.
As always I'm more than happy to assist and support my work and the work of Project Haystack where I can.
Thanks...Richard