[jbosstools-dev] The issue of project module factories

[Rob Stryker]

An alternative idea is that I could expose anything in the component.xml 
file as a child module, and anything specifically placed inside the 
project as a resource...  This would be even easier, but could be less 
accurate if someone links / embeds an out-of-workspace jar that's not a 
module of any sort but I'm listing it as one.

Rob Stryker wrote:
> 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?
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