Off the top of my head some reasons why it feels thick.

- Not having dependency management.. (I might have to install 3 modules just to 
get one module I need, while in Eclipse you just install the one you need and 
Eclipse lets you know what else it needs to install automatically).
- Modules take a relatively long time to start/stop
- The format of the modules admin page could be improved… once you’ve got 20+ 
modules you’ve got a lot of scrolling to do—and there isn’t any sorting 
capabilities, etc

I would agree that the two points Burke makes—improving management and making 
it easier to handle dependencies—are more important/better than making multiple 
modules look like a single module.

Mark


From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
Burke Mamlin
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 3:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [OPENMRS-IMPLEMENTERS] 1.10 MUST have

Mark, can you think about how/why module management in OpenMRS feels "thick" to 
you?  Both Eclipse & OpenMRS list their plugins/modules and let you manage 
them.  Why in particular does Eclipse – with many more plugins – feel lighter 
to you?

+1 for improving module management (in fact, Shazin did this for GSoC a couple 
years ago and it never got committed)

+1 for ways to make it easier to handle dependencies (like including them with 
an omod or making the module manager capable of grabbing them for you if you 
have internet connectivity)

I'm not excited (at least at first blush) about trying to make multiple modules 
(a module & its dependencies) look like a single module in the module manager, 
since dependencies are not 1-to-many (they're many-to-many).

-Burke
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Mark Goodrich 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Definitely a +1 here.

I think that modules should be lighter, or at least there should be a lighter 
alternative.  In Rwanda we are running 20+ modules, and we are going to be 
approaching that number in Haiti.  That seems like "too much", but mainly 
because of the heaviness of module management.  For instance, if I check my 
installed Eclipse plug-ins I see that I have a zillion installed--it is just 
much more transparent to me, and not something I have to worry about on a 
day-to-day basis.

I envision some sort of dependency system, where if you download a module that 
requires other modules, it can automatically download the other dependencies 
for you.

Another idea I had was to build a module that simply contains a set of related 
utility methods and/or services that I want to be able to use in many different 
modules... but I'd like to be able to do this without having to build a full 
OpenMRS module that implementers have to install independently.

Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of 
Rafal Korytkowski
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 12:01 PM
To: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [OPENMRS-IMPLEMENTERS] 1.10 MUST have

Hey,

1.9 is almost out. I'd like to start a discussion on what to include in 1.10.

Let's have a better module support! Module management needs to be improved. 
We're saying OpenMRS is a modular architecture, but it's hard to acknowledge 
working with the Manage Modules page.

I'm asking for a feature that allows to pack a few modules together in a single 
omod which can be installed and managed as one.

Let's say we have HTML Form Entry and HTML Form Entry Designer.
There's no point in distributing HTML Form Entry Designer alone since it 
requires HTML Form Entry to run.

The other example is still hypothetical. Let's say you want to share reports 
from the Reporting module using the Metadata Sharing module.
For that to work you would need the ReportingMDSSupport module. Why you need to 
know that? It should be packaged and managed by the Reporting module. It's the 
Reporting module that should know that if the Metadata Sharing module is 
started, it should start the RerportingMDSSupport.

Going further, there's a great new feature in 1.9: visists. In order for the 
HTML Form Entry module to make use of that you would need HTML Form Entry 1.9 
Compatibility module. And then comes 1.10 with even better visits and you need 
yet another HTML Form Entry 1.10 Compatibility module. It's a management 
nightmare to install all those modules and keep them running, but should be 
easily managed by the HTML Form Entry itself which when installed on 1.9 should 
simply start the 1.9 Compatibility feature.

Hope I explained the idea good enough! I'm waiting for thumbs up or down for 
this idea!

-Rafal

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