[jbosstools-dev] Teiid Designer and TP

[phantomjinx]

Hi,

Teiid Designer (TD) comprises part of jboss tools and provides an eclipse UI client interface for
modelling and deploying virtual databases (vdbs) to a teiid server, which in turn is deployed in jboss.

I have begun a discussion with mistria this afternoon on the possibility of a 3rd party P2 plugin
repository that would serve as part of the Teiid Designer target platform.

Background:

TD (unreleased version 8) uses a target platform of:
	* http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/development/juno (JBT milestone build)
	* http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/juno/SR0/ (Eclipse Juno Target Platform)

Thus, TD is a consumer of both the jbosstools TP and jbosstools features.

However, contained in the current TD codebase are the following wrapped plugins, ie. wrapping
3rd-party built/released jars:

	* net.jcip.annotations 		- jcip-annotations.jar
	* net.sf.saxon 			- saxon9he.jar
	* org.apache.poi		- poi.jar, poi-scratchpad.jar, poi-contrib.jar
	* org.jaxen			- jaxen-core.jar, jaxen-jdom.jar, saxpath.jar
	* org.mockito			- com.springsource.org.objensis.jar, mockito-core.jar
	* org.wsdl4j			- wsdl4j.jar
	* teiid_embedded_query		- commons-cli.jar  	jansi.jar		jline.jar  		staxmapper.jar							
					  jboss-as-cli.jar	jta.jar       		teiid-api.jar		teiid-engine.jar
					  teiid-client.jar	teiid-admin.jar  	teiid-common-core.jar

All of these jars are obtained from external websites, including the teiid jars (sf.net/projects/teiid).


Problem:

Everytime, an update of these jars is required, the new set of jars must be downloaded, included in
the TD codebase and committed to the TD repository.

Since we fetch the jbosstools and eclipse plugins from the target platform, it would be advantageous
if these wrapped-plugins could be broken out into their own repository, ideally with no jars
actually in the code repository then automatically built and served as features in a P2 repository.
This P2 repository is then used by TD developers and TD build infrastructure.

For example, with the teiid jars, a new release is uploaded to sf.net by the teiid team, downloaded
by TD dev, fully wrapped as plugin/plugins and added to the P2 repository.


Discussion so far:

* Mistria introduced me to the maven-dependency-plugin:get goal that could be executed during the
generate-resources phase to download release jars build-time

* Mistria also pointed out his new maven plugin that can take several platforms as input and produce
a single target file

* We agreed that this sounds very much like a jboss version of Eclipse Orbit and considered the use
of this repository across all jboss projects rather than just TD (an external deps + JBoss.org stuff
packaged as OSGi bundle in a p2 repo)

* Unlike Eclipse Orbit, we would wrap existing release jars rather than rebuild project from source

* So a suggestion was made that given a project X normally has additional X.tools and/or X.designer
projects, the latter should be responsible for shipping X as OSGI bundles

* Need approval since this represents an independent project. However, I would like to limit it at
first to being a TD focused project until either other's find a use for it and/or it proves itself
useful

* Consider a small independent P2 update site that is built manually and locally at first then move
to automation when that is working


Questions for getting started:

* The hosting location for this P2 update site. Do I / Is it possible to have access to
download.jboss.org to upload such a site?


I would be interested to hear comments / opinions on any of the above and if it is possible to host
such an update site please.

Many thanks for reading.

Regards

PGR

-- 
Paul Richardson

  * p.g.richardson at phantomjinx.co.uk
  * p.g.richardson at redhat.com
  * pgrichardson at linux.com

"I know exactly who reads the papers ...

  * The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country.
  * The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country.
  * The Times is read by people who do actually run the country.
  * The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
  * The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.
  * The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
  * The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is."

Jim Hacker, Yes Minister