Hi,
our current Sling starter project is still using the provisioning model.
It creates a startable jar and a webapp out of it.
Moving forward we want to switch to the feature model.
We already discussed in previous discussion that supporting a webapp is
not necessary. If demanded by users it can still be done at a later step.
Migrating from the provisioning model to the feature model is one thing
and that's more or less straight forward.
But the more interesting question is what we do for the starter. If we
do the same as is available today, we could build a simple maven plugin
which basically creates a jar file containing the feature launcher, the
OSGi framework and the features and its artifacts with some code to
extract this and start it.
While this is very convenient - you get a single jar with everything and
can just run it - it comes with the downside of bundling everything
together. So using a newer launcher, a newer framework etc. always
requires updating the Starter project.
On the other hand, we have the concept of feature archives: a zip file
with features and its artifacts. This can be used for distributing
features up to complete applications, like the starter. So another
option is to just create a feature archive of the starter and then users
can use a launcher to launch it. This is not as user friendly but makes
it easier to update the launcher, the framework etc. And also comes with
the bonus that its easy to add additional features to the launch.
In any case, we should probably add support to the feature launcher to
launch feature archives directly - regardless of what we do with the
starter. That's a minor addition to the launcher rounding up our tooling
story about features.
Add this point I'm a little bit unsure which way to go with the starter,
therefore asking for feedback. I'm currently leaning towards the second
option: just creating a feature archive for the starter (which we can
already do today)
WDYT?
Regards
Carsten
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Carsten Ziegeler
Adobe Research Switzerland
[email protected]
