On Oct 23, 2007, at 9:08 PM, Tim McConnell wrote:
Hi everyone, I have a couple questions I'd like to discuss about
the Geronimo Eclipse plugin:
1. How many versions of the Geronimo server should we continue to
simultaneously support in the Geronimo Eclipse plugin ??
2. What level of support should we provide in the Eclipse plugin
for the Geronimo 1.2 Beta ??
My thoughts and/or opinions are as follows (simply to start the
discussions):
1. The plugin now has support for four Geronimo releases (i.e., 1,
1.1.1, 1.2, and 2.0). I would like to support only three versions
at a time. This would still allow an upward migration path for
people who want to migrate their projects from older to new
versions (which is apparently one of the major reasons for
providing support for multiple versions to begin with). I feel
though that support for only three versions at a time would
facilitate a more stable (and smaller) code base, it would mitigate
some of the test scenario permutations inherit with multiple
version support, and ease the implementation transitions from one
release of the GEP to another. We've had and continue to have
difficulties supporting the Geronimo 2.0.2 deployment plans in the
GEP, which I'm confident will finally be rectified in the next
maintenance release of the GEP, but it's only exacerbated by
supporting so many versions.
Can you define what you mean by "version"? Currently we have a
major.minor[.service-level] release number scheme. By "release" do
you mean major number (e.g "2.0") or minor number (e.g. 2.0.1 and
2.0.2) releases?
Personally, I think it's just fine to support only one back-level
major.minor release (N-1) and the current major.minor releases (N).
Using a 2.1 release as a hypothetical example. IMO, the GEP could
support 2.1, and 2.0. Using the same methodology, a 2.0.2 GEP release
would support 2.0 and 1.1 (I see no reason to support 1.0 at this
point).
I think we'd want to be practical, here. Time between releases may be
a factor. Also, usage should be a factor in deciding what releases to
support. We currently expect our users to migrate to G 2.0.x. We
don't plan on any new 1.1.x releases. This may change over time. If a
large number of users are on a back-level release, we may want to
maintain support for the back-level release, even if it would violate
the precedence we're defining here...
2. I would like to start to untangle some of the interdependencies
we now have with the various features in the plugin in the upcoming
GEP maintenance release. I know very little about the Geronimo 1.2
Beta, but I get the sense that it is more of a "one-off" rather
than a nature progression from 1.1.1 to 2.0.x, and I just wonder
though how much the 1.2 support in the plugin is really being used.
If it's not being used, I would actually like to remove the 1.2
Beta code from the plugin in the upcoming maintenance release for
the reasons I've mentioned above.
I wouldn't characterize 1.2 as a "one-off", it was a natural
progression from 1.1 to 2.0. We ran into some bugs preparing for a
1.2 release. Since most of our focus was on a 2.0 release, the 1.2
issues never got resolved. At this point, I don't expect that we'll
have a "1.2" release. I think you can skip 1.2-beta.
--kevan
