[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Write a Distribution Maven Plugin

Hi devs, I'd like to propose to write a Distribution Maven Plugin that would have the following features: * Ability to generate XWiki config files. * Ability to generate a full expanded XWiki Distribution. Here are the steps it will do (since I have a first working version I'm pasting what it currently does): ** Step 1: Expand Jetty resources into the package output directory. ** Step 2: Get the WAR dependencies and expand them in the package output directory. ** Step 3: Copy all JARs dependencies to the expanded WAR directory in WEB-INF/lib ** Step 4: Copy compiled classes in the WEB-INF/Classes directory. This allows the tests to provide custom code, for example to override existing components for the test purpose. As an example the link checker might want to override the HTTP Checker component so that checks are not done over the internet since the tests need to execute in a stable environment to prevent false positives. ** Step 5: Generate and copy config files. ** Step 6: Copy HSQLDB JDBC Driver ** Step 7: Unzip the Colibri Skin ** Step 8: Import specified XAR files into the database * Ability to generate a full zipped XWiki Distribution * Ability to import XARs Use cases: * Simplify the current build (XE, XEM, etc) by using this plugin * Use it to generate custom packaging to write functional tests for platform modules * Allow xwiki developers to easily generate custom distributions by handpicking platform modules + their own modules As mentioned above I've worked on this and I'm going to commit a first working version real soon. My current goal is to write some functional tests for the linkchecker-ui module. ATM I have added a new "package" mojo as part of the packager plugin but I'd like to create a new xwiki-platform-tool-distribution-plugin in the future and deprecate the current packager plugin. Thanks -Vincent