Hi, 2014-08-29 15:00 GMT+02:00 Guillaume Lerouge &lt;guillaume(a)xwiki.com&gt;om>: I don't really agree with this, there used to be the "Application Manager Application" [1], well there still is, but I don't know if it's somehow obsolete, really used or not, etc ..., that defined an "app descriptor". I personally still use it, and I find the application descriptor in it to be a clever way to define what pages are part of the application with patterns (and flexible, ie you can manage whatever structure you applied, one space for code, or all mixed, or anything). And it's also very easy with it to export a xar of your in-progress application UI. IMHO it was a very user-friendly feature for an online development platform concept. EM is great, but has best benefits when it's server-sided (ie, create java components, and maven build, and deploy to a repo). When you have a maven build producing your xar from your resources, and deploying it to a wiki instance, this descriptor is not very useful anymore, but don't forget that some contributors may want to contribute a xar without making it installable by EM, and without going through the steps of creating a build etc ... In this case they could still rely on the App Manager App to define a minimum descriptor for their app. It could answer point 5) also, what is missing is some way to define what is a page produced by your app (either all pages created in a specific space, either all pages containing objects of listed XClass(es), either a groovy script filtering a $doc and answering true/false, ...). Now, there's also EM. Now, there's also the extension points to add applications in app panel / app bar (with, also, metadata about your application to provide like title, icon, main page, etc...). But without a way to define your applications pages. At the end, I don't really know anymore what should be used to define an application in xwiki :-) And the effort to publish an app to EM is not comparable with the effort to create an XObject of some kind of app descriptor ... [1] - http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Application+Manager+Ap… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software "an application is a computer program <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_program> designed to help people perform an activity" To me an application is unrelated to the fact that it's a skin, a macro, a class or anything, but only related to the purpose of it. To me a skin cannot be considered an application, because it's just look&feel stuff, it doesn't "do" anything - it's not a program. But if all the vm templates are considered to be part of skins, then a skin is an application. Some piece of code is not an application because it's just a sample program (or sample of a piece of program) - not a real program. A java Class can be an application but an XClass cannot - because it's just a data model. In EM repository on x.org, there is said that the "Logging Application" is the UI of the "Logging Module". But you could say also that the "Logging application" is composed of an UI and a Module (or API ?) ? Because if you only install the UI part without the Module part, it will not be usable. It will do nothing good to help you with logging activity. Is a flamingo color theme really an application ? http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/FlamingoColorTheme This structure can be a recommendation, but existing applications may not follow any recommendation - still you may want to be able to "manage" or list them. It is valid if we talk only about AWM of course.