The Apache Software Foundation has shut down the top-level Avalon project.

Apache Avalon, which began in 1999 to provide Java software for component and container programmers, has been split into several sub-projects, according to a resolution passed during last month's ApacheCon conference.

Foundation officials said that the Avalon 4.x framework will now be housed inside a new open-source project called Excalibur.

Excalibur, one of four sub-projects that grew out of Avalon, is working on a lightweight, embeddable IoC (Inversion of Control) container named Fortress that is written in Java. Excalibur will also house several Avalon-related components and utilities such as LogKit and the Cornerstone Component Collection, according to the Foundation.

All the Avalon mailing lists remain available but the SVN and CVS repositories have become read-only. The currently distributed software under the Avalon project remains available via distribution mirrors.

The other forks in the project include Codehaus Loom, DPML's Metro and Castle.

Click here to read an interview with Alex Karasulu, technical lead for the Apache Directory Project, an attempt to centralize naming and directory needs at the Apache Software Foundation.

The Foundation said Codehaus Loom will continue volunteer development of a microkernel container after the design of Avalon Phoenix while the Metro project will continue development of the next generation of the Merlin Service Platform using the Open Participation Software model.

The Castle Project is a small collection of tools and a simple inversion of a control container intended to work together to make development of applications (enterprise and server) easier.

Castle promotes component-oriented programming, aspect-oriented programming and separation of concerns.

This article was first published on eweek.com.