Hello folks, I need a best practise here - hope you can assist me with some ideas and suggestions.
*APIs for extensible-configuration plugins* I believe that plugins that exposes extensible configuration options should publish the APIs of those options as a separate project, to keep the set of transitive dependencies pushed onto any implementors small. If not extracting the configuration of the plugin to a separate project, you force the entire stack of transitive dependencies from the plugin project onto the implementing project - which might complicate things unnecessarily. I'm making the following assumptions 1. A plugin (say jaxb2-maven-plugin) should expose its API in a project whose GAV connects it to the plugin project. While the artifactID "jaxb2-maven-plugin-configuration-api" is a mouthful, the naming standard clearly connects it to the plugin project itself. 2. The PluginAPI project can contain default implementations - if required - of the configuration objects which will serve to de-mystify the potentially complex plugin configuration extension implementations. 3. When generating the documentation within the plugin project, it is nice to have all documentation concerning usage and configuration in the same location. *Example* Suppose you define the interface NodeProcessor within the PluginAPI project, and use it within the Plugin project as follows: @Parameter private List<NodeProcessor> postProcessors; .. and that the specification interface is trivial enough: /** * Processor/visitor pattern specification for DOM Nodes. * * @author <a href="mailto:l...@jguru.se";>Lennart Jörelid</a> */ public interface NodeProcessor { /** * Defines if this visitor should process the provided node. * * @param aNode The DOM node to process. * @return <code>true</code> if the provided Node should be processed by this NodeProcessor. */ boolean accept(Node aNode); /** * Processes the provided DOM Node. * * @param aNode The DOM Node to process. */ void process(Node aNode); } Since the NodeProcessor interface has nothing to do with Maven-esque APIs or JAXB dependencies, I feel that this specification - as well as the few standard existing implementations of the NodeProcessor interface - should be placed in a PluginAPI project instead of the plugin project. This implies that folks wanting to implement their own NodeProcessor does not need to handle/combat any JAXB/Plexus/[whatever] dependencies needed by the plugin project. 1. Do you agree? 2. If not - why? ... and - How else would you suggest we should manage this? -- -- +==============================+ | Bästa hälsningar, | [sw. "Best regards"] | | Lennart Jörelid | EAI Architect & Integrator | | jGuru Europe AB | Mölnlycke - Kista | | Email: l...@jguru.se | URL: www.jguru.se | Phone | (skype): jgurueurope | (intl): +46 708 507 603 | (domestic): 0708 - 507 603 +==============================+
