Hi Berin,

first of all I really acknowledge you for your tutorial "Developing with
Apache Avalon". This is really a great stuff - especially for beginners.
Are you going to adopt this too?

> 
> Also: an idea for a plug in (Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc.):
> 
> A plug in to generate the meta info in the class output directory so
that
> we can build and test all within an IDE.  This provides a more
realistic
> development environment for the user.

This is done with MerlinDeveloper in two ways:

1. you can create a new eclipse project with a wizard, which already has
all meta info in place and just run / debug it within the ide. Right now
I have only the "Hello world" tutorial included. But this is done
through a template engine, so that we could include all other tutorials
as well. I really would like to include the webserver example next. So
here beginners can see Merlin working in a minute. Even installation of
Merlin and its plug-in is automated so that the whole procedure just
takes some minutes. 

2. automatic meta generation. This feature is implemented and committed
to the sandbox but not completely done right now. But Easter time is
coming... Here you will have the following features:

- context sensitive meta tag help. After typing a @ in a javadoc you
will get all possible Avalon tags with an explanation.
- selecting one will insert the tag into the javadoc
- when saving the changes the meta info is automatically generated and
saved in the source- and output directory. 
- you can immediately run / debug and see the results.

With that in place you will not need maven anymore at all.

The other great feature of the next version of MerlinDeveloper will be
(nearly) transparent persistence of Java objects within Merlin through a
pluggable persistence service. Right now I'm using Hibernate - but all
the stuff is done so that we also can plug-in any other JDO
implementation or other mapping tools like from ApacheDB. Through ASF
legal reasons I've put all the Hibernate stuff in a new, "not ASF
Eclipse plug-in" which is not committed to the sandbox yet.

MerlinDeveloper will automatically generate on the fly:

- all needed source enhancements like a uuid field, an empty constructor
and all setter / getters
- all needed classpath entries in the ide
- all needed classpath entries in block.xml
- all needed mapping files and persistence meta infos
- all configurations for the database and the mapping tool
- all needed database schema
- and last but not least a lot of testcases to test the persistent
classes.

Transactions are handled through Merlins "context". So, for the user
persistent Java objects are just a matter of creating an empty class and
adding some attributes. All other stuff is done through MerlinDeveloper.
All kind of associations and subclassings and the corresponding mapping
to the database is done by MerlinDeveloper. Lists, Maps etc are also
handled and automatically mapped. 

I really would like to include a doc of those features in your new "how
to" doc!! So give me hint where to start. There is already a "primitive"
entry point to MerlinDevelopers doc at:

http://www.apache.org/~oberhack/eclipse/docs/index.htm

I've already talked to Steve to include MerlinDeveloper somewhere on the
website so that it could be found more easily.

Please let me know what you think as the next step!

All the best

Andreas

 
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