Volkar, John M. wrote:
Anyone give any thought to how sanctioned plugins could be hosted and
have a means for live running sites to auto-download and install updates
to them?
If there were someway to do this, the annotations which are being
discussed could be used to query a plugin about its needs, dependencies,
etc. This would have to be seriously thought thru, but could be quite
cool.
Hi John,
From someone with a *lot* of plugins to deal with, the current system
using jspwiki_module.xml is rather broken. It's too complicated, and
if one misses a file, or misses a plugin alias (i.e., a class used to
shorten a name or move a plugin into a parent package), or includes in
the XML configuration a plugin that isn't actually available, the whole
shebang comes apart. I've ended up removing all the XML files from my
jar files since I couldn't get everything to reliably work.
My feeling is that annotations might work fine if they permit each
plugin and any of its aliases to function independently and not be
bound to packaging restraints; this is not to speak of actual code
dependencies. I am wary of further complications though. If, for
example, someone has available to them dozens of plugins, and has
several sites using different combinations of plugins, whatever approach
is taken would hopefully be pretty seamless and not require complicated
combinations of configuration files or machinations in ant build scripts
as I've had to try, such as copying from a pool of jspwiki_module.xml
files depending on configuration. A mess.
I'm currently dealing with installs that include three or four jar
files, sometimes with code dependencies across jars, and as I've
mentioned before it's unclear about the order and priority of
processing when there are multiple XML configuration files.
Murray
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray07 at altheim.com> === = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/ = = ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk = = = =
Boundless wind and moon - the eye within eyes,
Inexhaustible heaven and earth - the light beyond light,
The willow dark, the flower bright - ten thousand houses,
Knock at any door - there's one who will respond.
-- The Blue Cliff Record
