Re: Minimal set of component attributes?

Berin Loritsch wrote:

> Peter Donald wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:48, Berin Loritsch wrote:
>>
>>> As to how it is to work with it, could you provide some feedback for
>>> us? Is it something you wrestle with, or does it just work?
>>
>>
>>
>> I outlined a bunch of issues with it last time. However the biggest 
>> issue is that is not being maintained. Maybe this late breaking stuff 
>> should be put off till post release of fortress 1.0 and then you can 
>> spend as much as you want experimenting without harming our users or 
>> making it difficult to migrate.
>
>
> This late breaking stuff does not use Commons Attribute. It imposes a
> packaging scheme that is administrated by ANT tasks--much like Phoenix
> does. I adapted the code from Phoenix's MetaGenerateTask (using QDox)
> to collect the information.
>
> From the user perspective, all they know is that they need to use the
> ANT tasks to package the components, and add a couple notes for people
> who want to generate new components (done in Cocoon).
>
> The docs would clearly state that while the @avalon prefixed javadoc
> tags would be used by future containers, the @fortress prefixed ones
> are specific to Fortress.
>
> The important thing is to provide *source* compatibility at this level.
> Before the Merlin release, I want to provide *package* compatibility.
>
> Right now both Fortress and ECM are sooo different from the rest of
> the Avalon containers that it is going to impose difficulties in
> migrating to other containers.
>
> This step brings Fortress a bit closer (though less featured) to the
> other containers. In essense, once the developer makes the step to
> Fortress, it becomes *alot* easier to swap out the container and
> make it work in other environments. The only thing that would need
> to be done to the components is *possibly* add more meta information.
> The tags already used would still be present in the future.


Berin:

I think you have hit the nail on the head. The key point is that there 
is a substantive difference today between Fortress 1.0 and the next step 
- and the key benefit of what your describing is the potential to 
establish a minimal initial context that will facilitate change. If we 
only have the name/shorthand, lifestyle, and service declarations, it's 
putting the idea into people minds. Looking forward it means evolution 
instead of revolution.

Two hours ago I was wavering - now I can see the rationalization that 
makes sense in terms of where we are heading.

>
> I am willing to push Fortress to Phase III of the Excalibur releases
> so we can straighten out this issue.


+1

Let's make it happen.

Cheers, Steve.

-- 

Stephen J. McConnell
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.osm.net