[jboss-as7-dev] Metadata for AS

Alongside our metadata discussions this morning, I'd like to offer up a prototype for use as the preferred metadata view for AS subsystems. We've baked in the testing community a project currently branded "ShrinkWrap Descriptors": GitHub: https://github.com/shrinkwrap/descriptors JIRA: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/SHRINKDESC The end user view looks a bit like: https://gist.github.com/828591 The purpose of the project is to define an object model for specification and JBoss-specific metadata, with the following driving tenets: * No compile dependencies outside the JDK * Pluggable backends (ie. DOM, XB, Stax, right now we use DOM and straight hardcoded parsing logic) * Easy import/export to/from File/URL/String/Stream/bytes Other concerns are to be addressed at another level, namely: * Merging * Annotation scanning repo output > object model view * Validation * ...basically anything initiated during deployment. Deployment logic should be, IMO: Deployer takes in deployment > Gen object model > calls outside layers for merging/validation/etc > deployer installs final view The descriptors project is currently immature and could use a jumpstart off the prototype. If we decide this is of interest to AS and subsystems, that's enough of a demand for me to take it on exclusively over the next few weeks to give us a cleaner, faster alternative to jboss-metadata, which has in my opinion, the following drawbacks: * The API *is* the backing model * Too many dependencies * Mixes in business logic (defaulting of values, spec validation) * Not interface-based (resulting in wrapper classes and the like to tack on functionality) S, ALR