[TRINIDAD] Portlet API and Portlet Bridge API Dependencies

[Scott O'Bryan]

Hey all,

First off, I would like to thank the people recently who have shown an 
interrest in running Trindiad with Portlet environment.  I've had a 
laundry list of things to do as of late and, in true community fashion, 
you are helping me evolve Trinidad to comply with the latest bridge.  Yay!!

I did, however, want to write a quick note and get some community 
feedback on a misunderstanding that has arose lately about Trinidad's 
dependency on the Portlet 1.0 API and the MyFaces Portlet Bridge.  The 
Portlet and Portlet Bridge API's are included in Trinidad's POM files.  
They are needed to compile the project, and this is unavoidable to a 
large extent because we have tried to build in a portlet solution.  To 
date, however, Trinidad's code is implemented in such a fashion that if 
it is deployed into an environment or an application WITHOUT these API's 
(like Tomcat or Jetty), the code will run without getting a 
ClassNotFound exception.  Instead the Portlet usecases are simply 
ignored and no classes which contain references to portlet objects 
(directly) are loaded.

I believe we want to continue to make the existence of the Portlet and 
Portlet Bridge API's optional at runtime.  As a developer for Oracle 
(whose current application solution uses Trinidad as a foundation), our 
ide does not currently include the portal apis when you say you want a 
Trinidad project.  The Portal and portal bridge are included only if 
your container supports a portal.  The last thing I want to do is force 
people who have existing applications to have to include several new 
API's in their webapps, especially because the Portlet Bridge code is 
still in beta and in the near future I hope to have support for both 
Portlet 1.0 AND Portlet 2.0.

Do people agree with this or am I off base?  Any questions with how this 
works?

Scott