Currently ACS code is fairly modular in that you can add plug-ins to ACS to extend most functionality. Unfortunately ACS is not packaged in a modular way. It is still delivered essentially as one large unit. There are many reason for this but one large barrier to modularizing ACS is that the Spring configuration is managed as one large unit.
I propose that we break apart the Spring XML configuration such that each component contributes its own configuration. Additionally each component will be loaded into its own Spring ApplicationContext such that its beans will not conflict with the wiring of other beans in ACS. This change will lay the foundation for a richer plugin model and additionally a more distributed architecture. The technical details for this proposal can be found on the wiki [1]. Darren [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Modularize+Spring
