[xwiki-dev] .xar Extension NOT Used Properly

Sat Feb 3 10:02:39 CET 2007

Hi Jeremi,

I'm +1 on my side but as you voted -1 we'll need to convince you to  
change your vote ;-) Let me give it a try below...

On Feb 3, 2007, at 9:41 AM, jeremi joslin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> -1
>
> I'm not for changing to jar. it's not a Java archive, it's an XWiki
> Archive. I don't see the point to change. People will think it's
> javacode.

* JAR is an archive format. It can be used for lots of different  
things. There are even software that use JARs for their installation.
* I really believe that in the future our applications will not be  
made only of XML files but will also contain other libraries (jar  
files) and java classes. For example imagine the IRC bot application.  
There are some xwiki pages but we also need the picoirc jar. We'll  
need to bundle all that together.
* XWiki is a Java application so all users are familiar with the JAR  
format.

Of course we can use the XAR format for that. XAR looks nice because  
there's XWiki inside but there's a cost of inventing a new archive  
format:
* It needs to be described
* There needs to be tools for it (or people need to rename it to  
zip...). BTW if it's a zip we might as well name it zip... The  
problem with Zip is that it does not support meta data information  
such as the jar format does. And we need these... And there are APIs  
to get these metadata so we don't have to reimplement all the code  
(as we've done for the package.xml file).
* It makes it difficult for the build (this is the same argument as  
above with tools) as all the existing plugins do not understand the  
XAR format so we have to reinvent all the tools... This is why I had  
to implement the xar handler and the xar plugin in our repository. It  
would make it much easier if it were an existing format such as JAR.

I think it would be much better to use an existing format (which we  
do except we're using Zip instead of JAR), already documented rather  
than invent a new one. There's no point in us hiding the underlying  
format we use by changing the extension. We might as well use that  
format's extension...

> if you look at this page :
> http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=XAR there is some other
> software who are using this extension. So why XWiki can't use it?

Some people have thrown nuclear bombs in the past. Is that a good  
reason for others to do it? Probably not.

It's not because people are doing bad things that we have to follow  
them ;-)

Thanks
-Vincent

> On 2/3/07, Catalin Hritcu <catalin.hritcu at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> What would you think of using the JAR extension instead of (mis-)
>> using XAR for XWiki applications, and using the JAR manifest for
>> storing the information that is now stored in package.xml ? Any other
>> way this can be fixed ?
>>
>> Already created a JIRA task about this
>>
>> http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-802
>>
>> but I would like to hear your opinions before spending the time to
>> implement a change you might actually not want :)
>>
>> Catalin
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Vincent Massol <vincent at massol.net>
>> Date: Feb 2, 2007 7:56 PM
>> Subject: Re: [xwiki-dev] .xar Extension NOT Used Properly
>> To: Catalin Hritcu <catalin.hritcu at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> Hi Catalin,
>>
>> I think it's best to discuss all this on the list.
>>
>> Also, I've provided some answer in JIRA.
>>
>> Thanks
>> -Vincent
>>
>>
>> On Feb 1, 2007, at 11:22 PM, Catalin Hritcu wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Vincent,
>> >
>> > I created a JIRA issue for this and assigned it to myself:
>> > http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-802
>> >
>> > At the time I don't really know much about what needs to be  
>> changed to
>> > make it happen, but I'll look into it. Suggestions welcome :)
>> >
>> >> I guess we could use a JAR format and use information in the  
>> manifest
>> >> to describe the content of an archive
>> >
>> > Can you also be more precise about the information you want  
>> stored in
>> > the manifest?
>> > http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/jar/jar.html#JAR% 
>> 20Manifest
>> > According to this it seems that a manifest can store many things.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Catalin
>> >
>> > On 1/31/07, Vincent Massol <vincent at massol.net> wrote:
>> >> Hi Catalin,
>> >>
>> >> See my other email on this topic. Basically I think I agree with
>> >> you but
>> >> we're currently focusing on releasing XWiki 1.0 and fixing bugs.
>> >> this is an
>> >> improvement request that will have to wait for quite long unless
>> >> someone
>> >> contributes a patch for it (including patches for the
>> >> documentation ;-)).
>> >>
>> >> Thanks
>> >> -Vincent
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Jan 8, 2007, at 11:32 AM, Catalin Hritcu wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> The new way to import/export wiki pages is very useful. However, I
>> >>  think that using the .xar extension for the zip(!) archive is  
>> highly
>> >>  confusing. This because there is already a XAR(eXtensible  
>> ARchiver)
>> >>  archiving utility which uses the .xar extension for quite a
>> >> while. And
>> >>  while now XAR is standalone, it will be quite probable used by  
>> the
>> >>  MacOSX package system in the future. Then download your  
>> archive will
>> >>  yield an error like this (safari automatically expands archives):
>> >>
>> >>  "Error opening xar archive: xwiki-1.0-beta-1.xar"
>> >>
>> >>  Links:
>> >>  http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/xar/
>> >>  http://www.nabble.com/xar-in-Mac-OS-X-t2081148.html
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> <messagefooter.txt>
>> >>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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> jeremi
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