11 Apr
2012
11 Apr
'12
5:23 p.m.
Hi,
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
Hi,
On Apr 11, 2012, at 3:31 PM, Eduard Moraru wrote:
btw,
I was talking about the console output at built time. The build summary.
How would that look like with the new pretty names?
Hi Vincent,
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
> 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 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?
<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.
It seems that currently we don`t support browsing a maven repository from
the EM UI. This means that the only place where we are currently "bothered"
by an artefact's name is the "Core Exttensions" and "Intalled
Extensions"
sections and maybe the dependencies section of another extension. The main
browsing and searching view is done only on XWiki Repository extensions and
here we only expose top level stuff as you said.
However, I don`t know if this will change in the future.
* 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)
I did not know about the treeview, but, from your description, it seems
that a great part of the functionality (search + sorting by rating which
should be the default IMO) ends up using a flat view.
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.
Always use 3 elements: "XWiki Commons - Extension - XWiki Repository
Handler" instead of "XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki
handler".
Thanks,
Eduard
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
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