[rules-dev] Projects by convention and configuration and Maven build plugin

[Mark Proctor]

I've started to write up what a "project" would look like for Drools and 
jBPM. The idea is to move away from progammatic apis and have everything 
done via a maven plugin, using conventions and configurations to make it 
all work. Also we want to make sure this works well with tooling. We 
want to right click and execute projects, without use having to enter 
boiler plate code. Please consider it a work in progress, it's still 
rough in some places and RuleModule is still very sketchy.
https://community.jboss.org/wiki/DroolsProject

I use the term Bundle to refer to zipped up deployable Project

key aspects to note on compromises to simplify things:
-single root classloader per project (currently per knowledge base)
-each knowledgebase has it's own resource path folder, all files below 
that are for that specific knowledge base
-move functions and type declarations out to their own resource path 
folder. With the classloader scoped at the project level, no point in 
having these under the knowledge base path.

This is the sort of project anyone in the community can pick up and run 
with, you don't need a deep understanding of drools or rule engines. 
Just how to build a maven plugin, although there will be a small amount 
of fiddly work around the classloader change, but that shouldn't be too 
hard.
http://www.jboss.org/drools/irc

Mark