New subject: [xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Rationalize our projects and SVN structure

18 Mar 2010

Hi devs,

Jean-Vincent, Thomas and I (hope I didn't forget anyone) would like to propose the
reorganization described below:

= Projects =

In 2007 we decided to start multiple projects based on the XWiki platform, namely:
manager, workspaces and watch. The objective was to provide multiple products based on the
XWiki platform with the same expectations in terms of quality; all those projects were top
level projects to reflect that. A year later we decided to put all our development effort
in XWiki Enterprise, since then all the projects except Enterprise and Office have been
left aside.

== XWiki Watch ==

 * Last significant jira issue fixed on 12/Jun/2009
 * Last release 1.1M1 (based on XE 1.5.1) - 11/Sep/08

While watch code is compatible with recent XE versions its distribution is not maintained.
The proposal is to move watch code somewhere else in the SVN (see below) and to drop the
distribution modules (database, distribution, installers). Watch documentation (including
installation guides) would be placed on code.xwiki.org and watch.xwiki.org pages would
redirect to this new location. Watch JIRA would be made read only and move to the retired
category. All new issues should use the existing Watch application JIRA.

== XWiki Workspaces ==

 * Last significant jira issue fixed on 19/Oct/2008
 * Last release 1.2M1 (based on XE 1.5.2) - 19/Sep/08

Workspaces is no longer maintened and it doesn't work with XE > 1.5.2. The proposal
is to move it to contrib/retired and to display a banner on workspaces.xwiki.org saying
that this product is retired (see http://beehive.apache.org/ for an example). Workspaces
JIRA would be made read-only.

== XWiki Eclipse ==

 * Last significant jira issue fixed on 06/Jan/09 
 * Last release 2.2 - 11/Jan/09

XEclipse is no longer maintained and it doesn't handle the xwiki/2.0 syntax. The
proposal is to move it to contrib/retired and to display a banner on xeclipse.xwiki.org
saying that this product is retired. XEclipse JIRA would be made read-only. Note that we
hope the project will be brought back from the dead in the future.

== XWiki Manager ==

 * Last significant jira issue fixed on 11/Apr/09 (XEM jira project)
 * Last release 2.2 (based on XE 2.2) - 16/Feb/10

The Manager case is different, it's released often and isn't lagging behind XE.
The problem is that we only release it labeled as stable, based on XE stable versions,
which is bad since it's not properly tested before that. 

Manager is not a product per-se, all the code that allows to run a wiki farm is located in
the xwiki platform, which means that having a different life-cycle for its distribution
doesn't make sense and doesn't serve the product (less testing). Manager is a set
of 2 plugins making easier to run a wiki farm. We should emphasize on this, make people
understand that the virtual feature is a core feature and that they can take advantage of
it on any XE release by using the correct plugins and apps. This way we could get feedback
from people doing staged deployment. We wouldn't mislead people by releasing a
distribution directly in a stable version.

= SVN Organization =

If we agree on the proposal above we need to refactor the SVN according to it. Possible
implementation:

{{code language="none"}}
/svnroot/xwiki/ 
|_ contrib/
  |_ people/
  |_ projects/
  |_ retired/
    |_ photoalbum/
    |_ s5/
    |_ workspaces/
    |_ xeclipse
|_ enterprise/
|_ extensions/
  |_ administration
  |_ application-manager/
    |_ plugin/
    |_ application/
  |_ blog
  |_ calendar
  |_ ircbot
  |_ officeimporter
  |_ panels
  |_ scheduler/
    |_ plugin/
    |_ application/
  |_ selenium/
  |_ skins/
    |_ colibri/    
  |_ statistics/
    |_ plugin/
    |_ application/
  |_ tag/
    |_ plugin/
    |_ application/
  |_ watchlist/
    |_ plugin/
    |_ application/
  |_ webdav/
  |_ wiki-macro-bridge/
  |_ wiki-manager/
  |_ watch
    |_ application/
    |_ component/
    |_ gwt/
      |_ gwt-client/
      |_ gwt-server/
  |_ workstream/
|_ platform/
  |_ components/
    |_ components-all/
    |_ xwiki-component/
    |_ xwiki-rendering/
    |_ ...
  |_ gwt
    |_ xwiki-gwt-api/
    |_ xwiki-gwt-dom/
    |_ xwiki-gwt-user/
    |_ xwiki-gwt-wysiwyg-client/
    |_ xwiki-gwt-wysiwyg-server/    
  |_ web
|_ tools/
|_ xoffice
{{/code}}

Modifications summary:

 * 4 projects moved to retired: photoalbum, s5, workspaces, xeclipse
 * platform/web/standard content (templates and resources) moved to platform/core/web
(packaging: zip)
 * platform/web/ gwt modules moved to platform/core/gwt (packaging: zip)
 * new plaform/distribution module (packaging: war) it replaces the previous
platform/web-standard minimal webapp
 * new extensions top level project gathering plugins and applications, rationale:
 ** applications made of a plugin and an application will now be released in one place
 ** with the future extension-manager all the extensions (plugins, document sets, skins)
should be released as a XAR
 ** coherent with extensions.xwiki.org

= XWiki.org Website Organization =

{{code language="none"}}
|_ www.xwiki.org
  |_ dev.xwiki.org
  |_ enterprise.xwiki.org
  |_ extensions.xwiki.org (was: code.xwiki.org)
  |_ l10n.xwiki.org
  |_ platform.xwiki.org
  |_ xoffice.xwiki.org
{{/code}}

wdyt?

Thanks
-Vincent