> > > Well ... let's consider this: in the past we used to put things under /lib/ > when they were being used by more than a few plugins. Then we started using > library-only plugins (e.g. lib-xml, lib-nekohtml, etc). There is a mechanism > that allows us to export any classes from a plugin so that they are visible > to the rest of the framework. > > It looks to me like we could be better off by putting all parts of Tika in > a single plugin, and then in Nutch core use a new extension point just for > the purpose of mimetype detection. This facade (MimeDetectors) would use the > Tika plugin if available, or some other (null?) mechanism otherwise. At the > same time Tika would be happy to configure itself having all tika-core and > parsers available under the same classloader, and it would define two > extension points - one for mimetype detection, and another for parsing. What > do you think?
I haven't looked yet at the way extension points work, so I don't really have an idea on how difficult this would be. Some of Tika's classes (mostly MimeType) are used explicitly in several places of the core, would we need to hide them behind non Tika objects in order not to have direct dependencies? I suppose we could try to make progress on the Tika plugin as it is now (i.e. with the work around I described earlier) and refactor things in a later stage using the extension points. Makes sense? J. -- DigitalPebble Ltd http://www.digitalpebble.com
