I am concerned about abandoning the fluent style of configuration as I found this a tremendous advantage and selling point of the architecture. It is a very good thing to be able to examine one Java file and see the entire application layout before you. It is also nice to be able to say there's no need for XML other than (in our case) for Tomcat integration. If it were up to me, I'd ditch Tomcat too, but it's a culture thing.
I will have to reserve judgement on XML based configuration and deployment until I see it, but I can't imagine it being clearer than the fluent style. We happen to deploy our services standalone and so deployment is not a big deal for us. I don't know the history, but I expect part of the reason we do this is to avoid all the XML deployment crap. Where I work, we choose Java and POJOs over XML and enterprise beans. This is one reason Restlet is so appealing to us. In the short time being involved with Restlets, I sense a trend to back away from the purity of the model. I'm no purist or RESTafarian by any stretch; I'm more interested in getting work done in the real world. But I wonder where the line is. This concern could be just be my imagination... I am glad to hear there is a sensitivity to API changes because that's very important to me, Restlets are gaining a user base here and so stability is important. There's at least one bug in b19 I really need so I'm gonna have to figure out a migration strategy. Sean
