[jbosstools-dev] How runtimes should work (my opinon)

[Max Rydahl Andersen]

Hi,

With all the runtime stuff blazing by I would like to remind people about  
how runtimes should work ;)

First let us seperate WTP runtimes from FWK (framework) runtimes.

WTP runtimes are "application servers" which can contain one or more FWK  
runtimes.

Until now we just have WTP runtimes for what we call "JBoss AS", we use  
the same for jboss.org and EAP runtimes.
With SOA-P (i.e. not ESB FWK!) it might make sense to create specific WTP  
runtimes called "JBoss SOA-P" or something similar
because this seem to have special needs - but i'm not 100% convinced it is  
needed.

FWK runtimes we have a couple, JRE runtimes (built into Eclipse), Seam and  
JBossWS come to my mind. WTP even has a JSF runtime too.
Each of these has a preference page that allows you to setup where the  
*standalone* info for a runtime is available.

These are all also exposed as facets that can be enabled/disabled on a WTP  
runtime.

And these facets has (or at least should have) a installation page that  
asks wether the Server (WTP Runtime) provides the jar for the runtime or
if it should use the jars from a standalone defined runtime.

If the user says the WTP runtime should do it then it calls the WTP  
runtime which will then expose the specific jars needed (if they aren't  
already on the default WTP runtime classpath)

If the user says it should use the one from a standalone defined runtime  
we can go ahead and add a classpath container which contains references to  
the *externally from eclipse* defined FWK runtime which will then have to  
be somehow deployed in the war/ear/jar.

If we do the above all things will work alike (as far as I can see) and we  
can use all the facet "preconfigurations" to create "few-clicks" wizard  
instead of "many-click" wizards ;)

It also allows us to have projects in JBoss Tools that uses standalone  
FWK's and does not need the whole WTP runtime/deploy etc. setup but just  
need to run a simple app.

-- 
/max