On Sep 1, 2008, at 9:23 AM, Anca Paula Luca wrote:
Sergiu Dumitriu wrote:
Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi devs,
Right now we have:
platform/ |_ core/ |_ xwiki-core/ |_ (others)/ |_ plugins/ |_ ...
The problem I see is twofold: 1) We can have platform components that are not core components (for example I'd like to commit the office component done by Wang Ning). 2) I'd like that we decide to deprecate the plugins/ system going forward and that all new code only write components.
For 1) I'd like to propose:
platform/ |_ components/ (contains (others)/ from above) |_ core/ (is the core/xwiki-core from above, to be removed once fully split into components) |_ plugins/ (to be removed once fully split into components) |_ ...
+1. This means that we can't normally have components that depend on the core, since when building the whole trunks, the component will be built before the core, which is a pre-dependency. But this is a good restriction, anyway.
But how is this compatible with the plugins transformation to components? Don't plugins (at least some) use/need the core?
Plugins are in plugins/ dir and will stay there until they're transformed into components. Then there's no restriction about depending on core till it's split into small components. Thanks -Vincent
For 2) I'd like to propose:
* Create an interface for Velocity APIs. Something like VelocityBridge (or VelocityAccess or VelocityApi or...). It would be empty. * Each component that want to be accessed from velocity will need to implement a component implementing VelocityBridge. It'll have a role- hint being the name under which it'll be access from Velocity. * Create a VelocityService class (component) which has a single get(String name) method and which uses the ComponentManager to look up components which implement VelocityBridge using the name as the role hint. * Put that VelocityService in the Velocity context under the name "services".
This looks good. However, what will happen with the VelocityContextInitializer component? Is it to be used only for special purposes, like setting the $doc variables, the $services and other essential elements?
In practice this means that users will be able to access all our components through the VelocityBridge implementations with a syntax like:
$services.office.convert(...) $services.translation.translate(...) ...
Note1: We would need to be careful that it would be forbidden for any java code to use a VelocityBridge. This is to ensure all code logic is put into components and not into the bridges. We should use the maven enforcer plugin to enforce this rule. Note2: This means we'll have 2 APIs to maintain: the velocity one (the bridges) + the "Java"' one (the main components). But I don't see any other way...
I still prefer the automatic velocity API exposure from the actual java class, using annotations and uberspectors.