I am going to be making some changes to how Felix creates bundle caches.
Currently, when you create an instance of Felix it needs one of the
following pieces of information to create a bundle cache:
* Profile name - in which case it creates a directory named after
the profile name inside the default "~/.felix" profile directory
for caching bundles (you can also specify a cache directory and a
profile name) or
* Profile directory - in which case it caches the bundles in the
specified directory directly.
The change that I want to make is so that it is possible to start Felix
without specifying any information, in which case it would default to
creating a bundle cache directory (e.g., "felix-cache") in the current
working directory.
This change seems simple enough, but then I started to wonder about the
profile notion altogether. I wonder if people feel we should keep the
profile notion or get rid of it. If we got rid of it, we could still
have something similar.
For example, we could modify the launcher to ask for a cache directory,
instead of a profile name. The resulting behavior would be something like:
1. If the user just hits return (i.e., doesn't specify anything) then
the default "felix-cache" directory is created/used in the current
working directory.
2. If the user types a simple name (e.g., "mycache") then a
corresponding directory is created/used in the current working
directory.
3. If the user types an absolute directory name, then that directory
is used/created for the bundle cache.
If the user wanted a similar "profile" experience just use simple names,
where the main difference is that the profiles are kept locally. If you
want profiles kept globally, then just specify the full path.
The profile notion is merely a convenience and we could still mimic it
completely in the launcher if people still like it as a convenience, so
it is not necessarily an either-or situation. But if most people do not
find the profile concept useful, then there is no reason to keep
dragging it along since I will be making changes in this area now.
It would also be possible to go further an not have the launcher be
interactive at all and only accept this information through properties.
I know that Oscar had "profiles" since the beginning, but that doesn't
mean that we cannot question them. :-)
Thoughts?
-> richard
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
