[jbosstools-dev] The issue of project module factories

[Rob Stryker]

This is a short discussion regarding project module factories for use 
while investigating how to implement the esb module factory properly:

Most of the module factories in eclipse are excessively inefficient (and 
complex). The server API doesn't *need* to be that complex. Some of the 
reasons for this are that the virtual component framework has references 
to other projects, references to outside or inside jars, and references 
to classpath variables. This in itself isn't hte problem... the problem, 
ultimately, is that for each resource (inside hte project or outside), 
the factory needs to decide whether this is a "resource" to be 
published, or a "child module". It then also needs to create a child 
module wrapper for each of these jars that count as child modules.

The way most of hte module factories out there do this is by OPENING and 
SCANNING each jar / zip resource in the project and checking for certain 
descriptors to find out if this is an approved module or not. If it's an 
approved child module, it comes up as a child module. If it's not, it 
comes up as a resource. As we've seen, though, there were for a long 
time bugs where something would come up as both.

It's arguable that, if we simply treat ALL jars (inside the project or 
linked) as "resources" instead of child modules, this removes the 
necessity of scanning each file, opening it, etc. This also means the 
only thing that would qualify as a child module would be linked projects.

So... what do we lose by this?  What functionality do we lose by 
treating these jars as resources and not as child modules?

As far as I can tell, *all* we lose is UI... the ability for the child 
module to show itself properly in the view as a child module, or in the 
add / remove project wizard.  I'm still investigating of course, but I 
believe that if we were willing to take this UI hit, the programming of 
a proper deployable factory for ESB (and all other new) project types 
could be much cleaner, much more efficient, much more maintainable, and 
much less controversial than the JEEModuleFactory.

Thoughts?