11 Apr
2012
11 Apr
'12
4:11 p.m.
Hi,
On Apr 11, 2012, at 3:31 PM, Eduard Moraru wrote:
Hi Vincent,
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
<Answer on naming>
I was the one who defined both the names we use in our pom.xml, the id in our pom.xml and
our directory names. I have chosen to use a structure that represents the full name in all
places:
* For names: XWiki Commons - Extension - API
* For ids: xwiki-commons-extension-api
* For directories: xwiki-commons-extension-api/
I've been told that we prefer to use simpler names since the hierarchy already
contains the information about the project. This proposal (which is not yet implemented
but decided AFAIK) initially came from the fact that long directory names don't work
on Windows.
It's the same for names. You don't need to have the full "path" in a
pom.xml name to know where it's coming from since it's contained in a pom.xml
which has a location.
* For names: Extension API
* For ids: xwiki-commons-extension-api (we need the full name for id since we use a fixed
groupid ATM. We could drop the first path though if we really and have only
"extension-api" since the group id is "org.xwiki.commons" but since
this is a technical id I'm not sure it's a good idea and it's not the topic of
this mail anyway ;))
* For directories: api/ (more precisely: commons/extension/api/)
Thus using short names is not shocking at all. To be honest I doubt anyone is really using
the name when developing. Having a short name wouldn't be an issue.
</Answer on naming>
I think the main point where I have not been clear is that there has never been any
intention of having XWiki modules displayed flat in the Extensions Home Page livetable :)
If that had been the intention then we would definitely have needed a long name to group
stuff together. But again it's not the intention at all. Why not? Simply because it
doesn't scale and would mean showing lots of stuff to users, flooding them.
So we need to talk about what we're doing now and future…
* Now: We only display modules that are either relevant to the user (ie that they can
download) or modules that are used as documentation points. We're not planning to
import all modules. The idea is to continue importing only extensions useful to users or
top level modules to hold the documentation for that module.
* Future: I think the best representation for the future will be the following:
- a treeview when you wish to browser everything. So to take the example of "XWiki
Rendering - Macros - HTML Macro" it would be under the XWiki Rendering/Macros/HTML
Macro tree nodes
- if you start typing letters in this treeview-livetable widget you'll see all the
extensions matching the letters you type, in a flat view (no longer hierarchical)
- we will continue to have tags to provide categorizations of extensions: for example
"'Macros", "Applications", "LDAP", "HTML",
etc
- we will also need a view (probably the default - the treeview would be a tab to click to
get it) which is a flat view listed by user ratings. So the most used extensions will get
better ratings and will show at the top, thus making the more technical or less used
extensions got at the bottom of the list.
- When displayed in flat view, we could easily display the location of the extension on
the next line in smaller characters and in grey color instead of black for example (to
make it less visible)
To conclude: it's very important that we have a pretty name as the name. This is the
intent of Maven's pom.xml <name> tag. The hierarchy is provided by the
<parent> information and can easily be gathered and displayed, whether you are in
maven (mvn dependency:tree, your IDE) or in the EM UI.
Hi devs,
Now that we're starting to use the Extension Manager (EM) we need to be
careful about the Description and Names we use in our pom.xml since they're
used by the EM to display information to the user. They're also used by the
XR application to import extensions located in maven repository into
extensions.xwiki.org (EXO).
Right now our names are of the type shown here:
https://gist.github.com/2311321
For example:
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Parent POM ............ SUCCESS [0.004s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - API ................... SUCCESS [2.066s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Handler - Parent POM .. SUCCESS [0.017s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Handler - JAR ......... SUCCESS [0.133s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - Parent POM SUCCESS
[0.004s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - Aether ... SUCCESS [0.132s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki .... SUCCESS [0.006s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki model SUCCESS
[0.188s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki api SUCCESS [0.010s]
[INFO] XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki handler SUCCESS
[0.024s]
These names are not nice names for users. Actually they're more IDs than
names. And having the users see those in our livetable on EXO isn't nice
for example. Nor is it nice if they see them in the EM UI.
I thus propose that we change the way we use names in our pom.xml to use
English-readable names, without any "XWiki" prefix.
For example, for the example show above we could have:
Extensions
Extension API
Extension Handlers
JAR Extension Handler
Extension Repositories
Aether Extension Repository
XWiki Extension Repository
XWiki Extension Repository Model
XWiki Extension Repository API
XWiki Extension Repository Handler
I`m not trilled at all about seeing this in my maven console. We lose any
(1) consistency of display and (2) module membership.
(1) is pretty obvious since "Extensions" is at plural (and misleading btw,
since it's just a parent module), "Extension API" is at singular,
"JAR
Extension Handler" is not prefixed by the module and so on. Plus, imagine
if the extensions view is sorted by extension name (not currently
implemented).
About (2), I consider it to be useful extremely to a user to get an idea
from a glance of where that "thing" (that his extension is or depends on)
actually is and where it comes from.
If you look at the other 3rd party extenions, you will see "Commons X" (ok,
module X comes from Commons -- "Commons BeanUtils"), "Jetty :: X"
(ok,
module X comes from Jetty -- "Jetty :: IO Utility") and so on. I understand
that this can be seen as a maven limitation, but all the other projects are
working around it like we also did.
On the other hand, projects like Commons are library projects that have
pretty much a flat structure (<Project Name> <Module Name>). Since in XWiki
pretty much everything is an extension, the Core Extensions section (EM UI)
will be flooded with xwiki modules which are pretty complex in hierarchy
and which will confuse the user when they are all displayed on the same
level.
I`m -0, towards -1 on the initial proposal.
If we really think that we have a problem on this area, I propose that we
introduce a convention for module names that both displays module
membership but does not overdo it (a combination of what you propose and
what we currently have):
<ProjectName> - <Feature/ModuleName> - <SubModulePrettyName>
Example:
XWiki Commons - Extension - API
XWiki Commons - Extension - Aether Repository
XWiki Commons - Extension - XWiki Repository Model
XWiki Commons - Extension - XWiki Repository Handler
XWiki Platform - Annotations - UI
XWiki Platform - Blog
<-- has no submodule
XWiki Rendering - Macro - HTML
etc.
The main idea was to make sure that we don`t have any extra levels in
<SubModulePrettyName>. IMO, 3 levels is decent from a user's POV and should
be enough for devs when structuring their code. If you think about it,
that`s pretty much what we already do in the maven project structure.
If the extensions view only displayed XWiki extensions (without 3rd party
modules from other projects) then your initial proposal would have been
relevant from the user's POV (though still not good for developers).
Maven is at hart a development tool. Yes, we`ve decided to reuse it on the
user side as well, but we should not trade a working dev practice for a
pretty name that will not even be useful to the user anyway. I fail to
envision a practical usecase for the development process where the maven
console displays pretty names. It will just be a string blob that will make
things harder.
WDYT? P.S.: I`m +0 for the new proposal, since I am quite
happy with the current
setup.
What new proposal?
Thanks
-Vincent
Thanks,
Eduard
> The alternative is to introduce a custom property in our pom.xm that would
> be used by the EM and XR but that's not a good solution because it means
> even more maintenance work.
>
> While not using technical id as names in our pom.xml is not as nice when
> displayed in the Maven Reactor I feel it's still the best solution we have.
>
> Here's my +1
>
> Thanks
> -Vincent