On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
In the beginning, there was only one cocoon distribution, packaged with two different packagers (zip for windows and tar.gz for unix and friends).
Then cocoon became very complex and we decided to create a binary distribution to make things easier. Things were indeed easier for new users to install and try out, but it was harder for them to actually *do* something with cocoon and tune it for their needs.
The fact that there is even a sourceforge project about a 'clean' version of our shipped cocoon WAR feels a little like a slap in our face.
Now, in the light of a cleaned-up build system and a very-well-factored-out static block architecture and the inclusion of a super light-weight servlet container, I think we are ready to finally go back to where we started and stop releasing binaries.
Before you jump up and down and scream "no, no, binaries are easier for our users", get off your life-without-a-compiler-windows-inflicted-mindset and think that every JDK comes with a compiler.
I can remind me that many users ask for a clean webapp.
To be really honest, Cocoon already includes not one but *TWO* java compilers!!! we could build from javawebstart if we really wanted to! (we should also decide if we want to remove pizza from the distribution!)
So, in light of the good old triad
./configure; make; make install
Only because of the fact that Cocoon have included two compilers, I do not want to used them.
I propose to ship Cocoon 2.1 *AS IS*, sort of a cleaned-up version of our current CVS and improve a little the 'INSTALL.txt' doc that will suggest you to do
There are many things, which don't belong to a release like unfinished blocks, scratchpad, and perhaps deprecated stuff...
no way. we release everything, it's up to you to use them. unfinished blocks and scratchpad are called so but they will be there for you to try and to ease building feedback on them. deprecated stuff will be needed for those people who depend on stuff that we changed (like the source, for example)
So I whould like a solution there we offer a source distribution, and binary distribution with a war, which includes all samples, and one clean war. So the user can first download the bin-dist, test all samples, and experimentalize with the clean webapp. And then he is glad and want more, he can download the source-dist.
I'm still strongly in favor of a single distribution with a very simple, short yet very well documented INSTALL.txt file.
Stefano.
