As a Karaf user I like the idea that JB proposes although I understand that it might be hard to implement. I think that in order to externalize the feature descriptors the feature mechanism must be stable in itself. I think that is a requirement even for other projects to provide Karaf feature descriptors. I also think it makes sense not to version the feature mechanism together with Karaf - it should be a common descriptor format that Karaf and others can depend on.
If not, then I think Guillaume, Ioannis and Freeman are rigth - it wouldn't work. But, if possible, I would suggest: a) Break out the feature mechanism into its own sub project with its own versioning. b) Try to stabilize the feature mechanism so that others can use it. At a minimum minor version updates should be backwards compatible and major version updates should be rare and announced. /Bengt 2012/10/18 Freeman Fang <[email protected]> > Yeah, I'm with Guillaume and Ioannis here. > －－－－－－－－－－－－－ > Freeman(Yue) Fang > > Red Hat, Inc. > FuseSource is now part of Red Hat > Web: http://fusesource.com | http://www.redhat.com/ > Twitter: freemanfang > Blog: http://freemanfang.blogspot.com > http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1473905042 > weibo: http://weibo.com/u/1473905042 > > On 2012-10-18, at 下午4:14, Guillaume Nodet wrote: > > > Yeah, that's also my fear. If we need to have a separate definition for > > each karaf version, I'm not really sure there's a huge win in > externalizing > > those from the karaf branches. > > Maybe that's not too much the case between 2.2 and 2.3, but I kinda fear > > 2.3 / 3.0 need a lot of changes, even in some projects themselves. > > > > On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Ioannis Canellos <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> The idea seems good at first glance, but there are things that we need > >> consider. > >> > >> In many cases a feature descriptor is not portable between major Karaf > >> versions, and it also happens that it breaks between minor versions. > >> > >> Even from Karaf 2.2.x to Karaf 2.3.x I've seen third party features > break. > >> So it may seem that most features could decoupled from the underlying > >> version of Karaf, but practically this is not always the case. > >> > >> An example: In the spring feature case, we also have the spring > deployer. > >> Where will the source of spring deployer will be hosted and which are > going > >> to be the versions of fileinstall and karaf that the deployer will be > built > >> against? > >> > >> > >> -- > >> *Ioannis Canellos* > >> * > >> > >> ** > >> Blog: http://iocanel.blogspot.com > >> ** > >> Twitter: iocanel > >> * > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > ------------------------ > > Guillaume Nodet > > ------------------------ > > Blog: http://gnodet.blogspot.com/ > > ------------------------ > > FuseSource, Integration everywhere > > http://fusesource.com > >
