A couple more issues: After thinking more about it, I think the examples project would be the best way to go.
1) In the build files, which avalon jars should the examples be using? It would be easy to point the example's build.xml files at the avalon-framework.jar, avalong-excalibur.jar and logkit.jar in the jakarta-avalon/tools/ext directory, but those are not always up to date. If I make the build use the jars in the various project's build/lib directories then they are up to date, but the user would have to have the various projects checked out and built to be able to run the examples. One option that I was thinking of was to have an examples wide build.xml file in the root which contains an init-jars task. This task could be called by the various examples' builds. Its job would be to look for the required jars and copy them into a build directory within the jakarta-avalon-examples project. It would first copy the files from the tools/ext directory, then try copying them from the various build directories. By doing this, the examples would always have an up to date copy of the jars to work with. 2) In addition to the init task, the project build.xml file would have a docs task which would look for src/documentation directories in each of the example applications and then build a common documentation set. This documentation set could then be added to the jakarta-avalon-site directory for inclusion in the Avalon website. Leif Leif Mortenson wrote: >I was thinking about starting on an examples directory with the goal of >starting to provide a place where new (and long time) users can go to >find simple sample applications showing how to make use of the numerous >features in Excalibur. > >To many people, having a simple example that they can build and run >quickly out of the box is more valuable than a stack of documentation. >Currently, many of the features are not yet documented and learning how >to use certain features can involve many hours searching through the >mailing list archives :-) > >Here is what I propose. Create a directory called examples in >Excalibur's root directory. Then each example would be placed within >this directory as its own independent project. Each example would >contain its own build.xml file to keep things simple, and would build to >a target inside that directory. The build would make use of the standard >build tools included in the jakarta-avalon project and all avalon jars >would be referenced in their parent directories. So the examples would >require that Excalibur was first built. > >I was going to take a crack at writing an example that shows how to work >with JdbcDataSources as there are so many questions about how they are >used on the list. Other examples that would be good to have initially >are showing how to configure logkit. Or simply loading a single hello >world component using configuration / roles.xml files and the >ComponentManager. > >It might be useful to also have a common directory where jars used by >the examples could be placed (The hsqldb.jar, or mysql.jar files for >example). > > >One other option would be to create a new project called >jakarta-avalon-examples where these could be located. That would prevent >the jakarta-avalon-excalibur project for getting too cluttered. > >Thoughts how this should be structured? Obviously, the first few should >also include documentation to get that going as a standard. :-) Using >the Cocoon based docs seems like the best way to do so... > >Leif > > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
