18 Jun
2012
18 Jun
'12
11:31 a.m.
On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Denis Gervalle <dgl(a)softec.lu> wrote:
XWiki ecosystem is not just about what's in https://github.com/xwiki/.
Here hare several examples of distributions of XWiki I know about with
they own versions and customizations:
* XWiki Cloud
* Curriki
* Nearbee
And there is lots of others I never heard about.
Even if we were proposing only one distribution in
https://github.com/xwiki/ we would still don't know anything about it
at platform level which mean we can't suggest the default
corresponding XAR to install for it to be complete, we can't check and
warn the admin that there is a new version etc. I really don't see
what you don't understand in the fact that we need to know what is the
distribution before doing distribution related actions.
I was not referring to distributions, but to the way dselect provided a
presets features for different purposes. Which only append at initial
setup, but does not persist later. Upgrading later, is only based on
installed packages.
Ok, maybe you should currently explains me what is the advantages of the
two distributions we have. I have already found this so confusing, because
you can so easily switch from one to the other without reinstallation.
The whole idea is to extract as much informations as we can from the
currently installed stuff to make admin life easier and allow to
propose distribution related actions. If you can't admit that we do
have official distributions (even if it was only XE) and that 99% of
the users don't choose the jars/resources themself one by one to
create their own WAR or whatever other way of packaging I can't really
say much more.
What I propose if something that allow to manage distributions and
that obviously also work if you don't have any declared distribution,
you will just not get any distribution related informations.
--
Thomas Mortagne
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Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
eGuilde sarl - CTO
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Thomas Mortagne
On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Thomas Mortagne
<thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com
All it cost right now and the only thing this vote is about is to
indicate in the METAINF.MF what is it exactly, it's one line. That's
exactly what METAINF.MF is for and IMO Maven itself should even put
those informations but it's no unfortunately. I'm not even proposing
to introduce some custom distribution file...
It also allow to remove the custom version.properties files which will
be made useless since we will get all informations we need from the
pom like we do with any core extension jar. Said another way it's
about knowing what is the distribution and not just what is the
distribution version.
wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 7:18 PM, Denis Gervalle <dgl(a)softec.lu wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 12:26
PM, Thomas Mortagne <
> thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi devs,
> >>
> >> Since I got some veto on http://markmail.org/message/feavtmfokcsaalpo
> >> lets cut all that in small peaces.
> >>
> >> The today's episode is about finding what is the war we are running it
> >> at runtime to list it in the core extensions (among other things it
> >> allows to check for available updates).
> >>
> >> Like the JAR packages, a WAR contains pom.xml file, problem is that
> >> this pom.xml file is not in a "stable" location
> >> (META-INF/<groupId>/<artifactId>/pom.xml) and I can't find
any generic
> >> way to scan a WAR like Reflection allows to scan jars files from the
> >> classpath.
> >>
> >> So as a last resort solution I propose to include the extension
> >> identifier in the METAINF.MF at build time. This will give me the
> >> entry point I need to find the pom.xml and gather more detailed
> >> informations about the war to put it as core extension.
> >>
> >> WDYT ?
> >>
> >
> > Currently, I do not really see what it changes compare to our previous
> > thread.
> >
> > Let me try to better explains myself with a similar example from another
> > domain.
> > In Javascript, you sometime needs to detect in which browser you are
> > running in, and we all know that this is bad.
> > The good way to do is to detect available features, and not the browser
> as
> > a whole.
> >
> > I see the war here as the browser, and the deployed jars/xars as the
> > available features. Providing a way to know which was the initial WAR
> > deployed, is therefore encouraging the bad way to know what features are
> > available. This is even worse than in the browser detection, since XWiki
> is
> > really modular, and you can install a XEM war, but setup XE over it. So,
> I
> > really do not understand currently why you really want to better know on
> > which WAR you are running ?
>
> This comparison does not make any sense. It's like saying a browser
> should not know its own version to be sure it's not going to indicate
> it.
>
Finally, trying to make analogy to clarify my point does not make it :(
There is absolutely no issue with putting somewhere the version of the
core, but this is for me completely different to put in the distribution.
If you had read my mail more carefully you would
have seen one example
I gave: "among other things it allows to check for available updates".
I had read it carefully ! So the only goal would be to automate the update
of the war itself ? Not sure to know if this could be done, but you may
have a better view than I have on this specific point. I do not see the
exact relation with EM however. So, if your goal is to build a war upgrade
procedure, when the war has been the deployment method, than you have
probably the only valid use case IMO, and you have my agreement, but this
is really lot of work for a very simple admin procedure for which
containers already provide an interface.
I don't understand what you mean, tomcat is never going to tell you
that there is a new version of XE.
I appreciate your concern on the the work to do but that's not what
I'm asking. All I'm asking is if everyone OK with the way I plan to
extract distribution related informations.
This is one of the perfectly valid use case for
wanting to know what
is the distribution and there is others I'm sure. For example right
Really curious to know about other valid usages, and in particular, to know
how to avoid bad one.
now by default you get the distribution name and
version in the footer
and this is done by putting it in the name in XWikiPreferences page at
build time which could hardly be worst. It will also make the
version.properties useless and all the build configuration to generate
it since you will get a generic API to get the version of the
distribution and also any extension like you can do already.
AFAIK, we have only 2 distributions, XE and XEM, and the difference between
these two wars are really small. This is probably mainly why I do not
understand your goals. Writing the distribution next to the version is not
so easy since you may setup the XEM war and finally use it as you would use
XE. or the reverse.
I don't really care that you customized a XE and installed some
extensions to manager wikis, your distribution will still be XE and
what you will get is XE related informations. All the rest is
extensions.
Moving further in the future, we may expect to have a single minimal WAR,
and a bunch of extentions choosen freely by the user, using something
similar to a linux setup, using recommended groups of extensions to build
Linux is not a good example for what you are trying to say. Many
distributions like Ubuntu to cite just one have the concept of
distribution as a whole with version and distribution upgrade. XWiki
well suited for this or that purpose. And therefore, the WAR will
completely loose its meaning. IMO, currently, a WAR is simply the minimal
core, and a pre-selected set of extensions, just to ease an initial
setup.
After being deployed, it loose its meaning
completely, and could fully
changed. I know that these "core" extensions are installed for ever, but
this more a limitation than a feature, except for the minimal needed set.
Please lets do things one step at a time. Also don't assume that the
future is settled, I still don't agree with you that it is a good
thing to completely loose the concept of XWiki distribution that you
can upgrade etc.
It's not like I was proposing a very complex
thing that is going to
make XWiki stuck for any evolution of the architecture, it's just
adding one perfectly valid information to the MANIFEST.MF file. This
This exactly the meaning of what you want to add that I do not understand.
is not something built at the hearth of extension
manager that you are
running in a WAR, it's just one more information when this information
is available. It will not change anything at all in the way to deal
with extensions in general.
If the information as no meaning, it would be useless. So what is the
meaning of that information ? XE and XEM are so similar, and each could be
turned into the other one with very simple configuration changes. So I do
not understand the meaning of the information you are adding, and for which
use case it is valid to be used.
The fear that a bad developer will put XWiki Enterprise 4.0 as
Could you explain why you really want to give that initial set of
extensions some properties as a whole ? or am I missing something
fundamental ?
Where did I said exactly that I want to replace the list of core
extensions by the single WAR entry ? The goal is not to make all
extensions put the war as dependency instead of the proper core
extensions but to provide an information that should be provided
simply because it exists and can be useful.
dependency instead of listing the actual modules
his extension needs
should not prevent us to provide this information for other needs than
dependency resolution.
No fear of that, only of the meaning and usage intended for the information
you were adding.
+1
--
Thomas Mortagne
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Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
eGuilde sarl - CTO
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