Hi Robert and All,
robert burrell donkin wrote:2. Shall we make our Axis2.war file a separate download, and not puttingsome random musings...
On 10/24/05, Eran Chinthaka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
Hmm, I feel bit upset with this.it in dist-bin ? Some people may need only the war file and they can
download it without downloading the whole dist-bin.
people have been talking about CPAN for Java for years and years but it's
never really gained any momentum. the maven repository exists somewhere in
that solution space but IMHO doesn't really covered it.
i've been wondering whether one possible approach might be to ask people to
build (using ant or maven) some of the artifacts themselves. we could ship
maven project.xml's (or ant build scripts) which would then download and
build the required artifacts. this would allow various standard, tested
recipies to be included as part of a release without having to include lots
of jars. perhaps this is a way to satisfy the competing demands of newbies
and evaluators (who want everything and just to work) and minimalists (who
want just the bare bones so that they can add only what they need).
no need to feel upset: it's just an idea that i thought i'd throw open for discussion...
I personally feel that when you download something, you should be able to use it out of the box. For example, when you download Axis2, you should be able to write a sample without any other worries.
yep :)
the expectation that you should be able to use a primary distribution out-of-the-box (as opposed to a downstream packaged distribution) is a major distinctive feature of the java open source ecology. i agree that it's of crucial importance that newbies and evaluators are able to get the distribution up and running quickly and easily.
however, the very act of bundling enough into the distribution to make this possibly also means that other people will be upset about the size of the download. it also makes clear licensing more difficult (which is why it is frowned up by many ASF members).
this leads to the question: what is the optimum scope for a running axis aimed at newbies and evaluators? should we try to include all the best goodies or just the basics?
I hope you know, how people still struggle to work with Maven, despite the fact that its easier to use. See, those are developers, what will be the user experience.
I like to see the XMLBeans way. You download all the jars including dependencies and run whatever stuff. I agree that when you provide the project.xml thats it. But do you think user needs to download maven and learn a bit, to run Axis2. IMO, its seems there is something wrong.
AFAIK you can't actually run Axis2 out of the box: even with the war, you need a servlet container to run it in. there is some knowledge required and work to be done.
taking this line of argument to it's ultimate conclusion, would mean considering distributing an executable jar which would start a servlet engine (jetty, perhaps) with axis pre-deployed.
So what we can do is, we can have multiple versions to download. A minimal version with the project.xml, war to be downloaded seperately, the whole stuff packed in to one, etc.,
What do you all think ?
multiple distributions tend to cause major problems for release managers and downstream maintainers. they also tend to be confusing for users. AIRI most of the jakarta projects which had major issues with release management were the ones with multiple distributions.
you're probably right that java users expect to be able to run somethings out of the box. for axis, this probably means a war (of some type). so, it probably makes sense to include this in the binary distribution.
i still wonder whether sample build scripts might be used to satisfy the needs of other, more expert users...
- robert
