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

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