The charter (http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/LibcloudProposal) mentions Python but does not say libCloud is Python only and will remain such. I think it's a great idea to bring libCloud to another language like Java. It can only help to broaden libCloud's appeal and applicability. It will also likely broaden the libCloud community.
There are other libraries available, like jcoulds. However, that in and of itself is not a reason to stop innovating here. One thing I think is important is to be able to tell people to go to a single location for a consistent provider neutral API vs. multiple places that will have different APIs. Furthermore, choice in the market is important, so if people choose jclouds, great, but let's not make that choice for them. Now, this brings up something else I wanted to get some feedback on. One issue with libCloud is that when you want to bring it to another language, like Java or something else down the road, it requires a port of the engine, plus the different provider adapters. Should we consider a different approach? For example, what if we wrote the engine in C and provided a C interface for the APIs (reboot_node, create_node, list_images, etc). This way I can write my code in any language and just call out to C to interface with the libCloud library. Yes, this would require a rewrite of the exising Python base to C, but it would put to rest the language discussions as well as give us a single engine to maintain, vs. multiple. I think this could be a positive step forward and really broaden the appeal of libCloud. Thoughts? Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Adrian Cole <[email protected]> To: [email protected], [email protected] Date: Sun, 16 May 2010 22:43:07 -0700 Subject: Re: [libcloud] Java Skeleton Available I'd ask the same question, and also ask how this gets reconciled with the incubator proposal of libcloud itself. The original charter clearly stated this was a project for the python community, and that it seems to have served well. Based on this behavior, it seems that all you need to do to make sweeping changes in a project is to submit a single patch supporting your company's cloud. When exactly did libcloud turn into a multi-language project? I don't recall or see a "single" request from the java community apart from IBM (eric's ) after they submitted a patch to support their cloud. On the other hand, "the" java library for cloud computing has had continuous increase in committers, activity, and adoption, not to mention proven ability to convert community's requests into code. Where's the transparent need? Regards, Adrian Founder jclouds
