AE project structure

[Jens Grivolla]

Hi,

we currently (almost always) use the CPE to run our AEs (packaged as 
PEARs and then installed). However, we would like to start packaging our 
AEs differently to make it easier to also use them programatically, or 
e.g. include them in Solr using SolrUima. To do so we have started to 
modify some of our annotators so they load their resources from the 
classpath instead of using a file path and are getting closer to being 
able to package everything in JAR files.

However, the standard UIMA project structure puts things quite 
differently from a typical Maven layout, meaning that there's quite a 
bit of tweaking to make things fit with being both resolvable from the 
classpath and staying close to the UIMA structure. Should we just forget 
about uima.datapath and the /resource and /desc folders and put it all 
in /src/main/resources etc.? How compatible would that be with the 
PearPackagingMavenPlugin?

I think we will move to using UimaFit once it is released, but for some 
of the people here being able to have readily packaged PEAR files with 
descriptors that can be distributed is a big advantage that we don't 
want to give up.

Thanks,
Jens