New subject: [xwiki-dev] [Proposal] New locations for skins in SVN and their delivery format

30 Dec 2006

Hi,

As previously discussed, it would be nice to put skins in a specific
location in SVN so that we can start delivering skins separately from the
main distribution. I'm proposing to put the skins in:

xwiki/xwiki/trunks/
  |_ skins/
    |_ <skin1>/
    |_ <skinN>/

The web/* modules builds would still bundle one skin.

Now the question I still have is how do we make the skins available to end
users?

We have 2 options:
1) We could provide them as zips. The users would then have to have access
to the machine where the wiki is running and unzip them in the skins/ dir of
the webapp.
2) Provide them as a single XML document (with all files attached to the
skin document), as a XAR.

I think option 2 is much better as it allows users to install the skin
without requiring access to the machine.

Note: Sergiu tells me that we need to check that attaching all the files to
a skins document works as he had some issues with an old wiki. As a reminder
Sergiu tells me that skin files are searched in 5 places:
- XWikiSkins object property
- skin doc attachment
- skin directory
- base skin
- default skin

It's a little bit more complex in term of build but it should still be
doable. Here's how I envisage it:

* have the skin files in the <skinN> directories as mentioned above
* have the build use the XWiki Java API to do the following:
  - create a Document
  - add a XWikiSkins object to it
  - for each file in <skinN> attach it to the Document
  - export the Document in XML
* have the build create a package file (XAR format) and create a XAR file

Thus each <skinN> modules would produce a XAR file

WDYT?

Thanks
-Vincent

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