I've located the code in service-builder that loads gbeans defined in embedded plans named geronimo-service.xml in dependencies referred to from gbean config plans.
I would like to remove this capability. My experience with its former use to configure parts of jetty was that it successfully concealed from me, for weeks, how many of the gbeans were getting configured. Since I prefer to be able to find configurations through an explicit path, I would prefer to prevent any other such use of this feature.
Are there any objections to my removing this capability?
The intention here was to allow a service archive to declare its own dependencies so that people did not have to try and figure it out for themselves. For example, to use the geronimo-jetty jar I would need to ensure that a suitable version of Jetty was available to it - how do I know what those dependencies are?
Another intention, which never really materialized as we went away from XML, was to allow GBeanInfo to be declared in this file rather than in the code - that way you could annotate the archive without having any Geronimo references in the actual code. Remember, this was GBeanInfo metadata describing the classes, not GBeanData defining instances (as then the archive would be reserving specific instance ids (names) which would lead to reuse problems). I don't know where you GBean instances were getting defined but it should not have been from this mechanism.
I would contend that some of the confusion here stems from viewing this as a deployment plan rather than as a definition of the GBean types that the module provides and depends on. It could be because the descriptor has not evolved with the rest of the architecture and perhaps a better name would be less confusing - would gbean-info.xml be clearer?
Until we resolve issue about knowing what the nested dependencies are I am reluctant to remove this feature - after all, if you don't need it you don't have to use it.
-- Jeremy
