Welcome to the Apache Aries group blog! Although I can't really call it a group blog right now because I am the only person that can write entries - this  will change very soon, twelve people have asked for IDs and I'm hoping it won't be long before they can write.

The point of a group blog is to be able to have a place to talk about the project, I hope that means that many people will contribute, each sharing a different view point. Of course, all the important issues will continue to be discussed on the mailing list - this isn't the right place to argue over unresolved technical issues. This is a place to celebrate achievements and to talk about some of the new and exciting things we are doing.

 I'm in the lucky position of being completely new to all of this, Apache, Aries, OSGi, Maven.... everything, although I have worked on open source code for the past 5 years. I say lucky because I'm approaching this from the same point of view as some of the people who will use code from Aries so I'm busy asking beginners questions and making beginners mistakes. As I start to understand things I will write them down, I hope this will make it easier for other newcomers. 

Yesterday I added a HelloWorld Blueprint tutorial to the Aries website. It's very simple and just demonstrates some of the features of the Blueprint container. If you get a chance to test it and can see ways to improve it please let me know.

 Zoë