Congratulations on passing the TCK! It sounds like usability is now a top concern, so here are some quick first impressions based on the geronimo-1.0-169186 build. I approached this as someone who had just heard the buzz about Geronimo and had downloaded it to give it a try.
Many of these items are simple documentation or user feedback issues that should be easy to fix. A lot of them are pretty minor, but taken together, they make a difference. 1. It would be nice to have obvious startup.sh and startup.bat scripts in the bin directory so that the user doesn't need to look at the README file to figure out how to start the server. (I know java -jar bin/server.jar isn't hard -- it's just not quite as brainless as a script called "startup"). 2. The README file should probably put the instructions for starting the server ahead of the deployment instructions. (I think most people will want to make sure Geronimo starts successfully before they invest time in deployment or configuration.) 3. When first launching the server, it's hard to tell when startup is complete. There are lots of pauses, and it's not clear whether there will eventually be a "successful startup" message. This adds a bit of uncertainty/confusion as you sit there and wonder whether it's done, still going or broken. (It would actually be quite cool/unique to add some sort of ascii progress bar like sftp and scp use.) 4. During startup, too much information is written to the console. Ideally, it should display a "Server starting..." message, followed by some sort of small progress indicator, followed by a "Server started successfully!" message. Only errors, severe warnings, or truly useful environment information should go in between. (A verbose switch could be added to allow developers to load the server with the current chatty log4j config.) 5. There's no sense of what to do next when first launching the server. It would be nice to see something like "Server started successfully! Visit the web console at http://localhost:8080/";. It would also be very nice to print out a quick table of the ports that the server is listening on. Perhaps something like: ----------------------------------------------------- > bin/startup.sh Environment information: JDK_HOME: /usr/lib/java GERONIMO_BUILD: 1.0-169186 VERBOSE_LEVEL: quiet (use -verbose to change) SERVER STARTING.................................. Now listening on: Port 1234: JMS Port 8080: HTTP Port 8081: HTTPS Port 9876: Foo SERVER STARTED SUCCESSFULLY! Browse to http://localhost:8080/ for web console ----------------------------------------------------- 6. I expected to find some sort of welcome page at http://localhost:8080/ (to reassure me that installation & startup were successful), but just got a 404. It would be nice for that URL to present a welcome page that gives "quick start" instructions for configuration, deployment, accessing the management console, etc. Links to example apps and instructions on where to find their underlying code would also be helpful. 7. Since there was no obvious management console, I followed the instructions to enable the debug console. While doing this, I noticed that: a. the README doesn't list username/password info next to the debug console instructions. It's in a different section, and I didn't notice it until after I was surprised by the "Username:" prompt. b. Password input echoes to console (perhaps use shell/batch scripts to work around this?) c. In general, debug console deployment takes a long time with no feedback 8. Not immediately clear how to configure anything (data source, server ports, application, etc.) There are no config directories that can be browsed or grepped, no examples of data source configurations for common databases, no sample applications, etc. At this point, you're pretty much dumped into the main documentation page and need to comb through articles and ebooks for more info. This is an easy point to give up playing with Geronimo and go back to work on something else. Anyway, that was the first 10-20 minutes. Now I need to work on porting a few apps from JBoss and WebLogic to Geronimo. I'll keep a log of first impressions as I go and will try to report back at some point. Cheers, Erin PS. The tarball I downloaded included a NOTICE.txt that says Geronimo is still in the incubator. This should probably be removed.
