Ralph Goers wrote:
Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
Pier Fumagalli wrote:
IMO, we should start simple and add functionality when needed. Remove things is much harder. Also even if we chose to go for alternative 4. an important message from Pier that we should take into account is that component exposure adds complexity. So if we go that way, we should have mechanisms that so that we can have detailed control over what components and classes a block exposes. A block that exposes much will be much more likely to create conflicts with other blocks.
Glad that we have agreement on this! :-D
Ok, you changed my mind. Let's keep the concerns separate and see what happens.
Frankly, I'd love to see how this will even work. If someone could explain how the cron block can be a block without exposing components then maybe I could understand.
The cron block seem to consist of a number of components and no sitemap functionality so it would, at least in the first step not be a block at all. Pier's idea IIUC is to have a possibly Maven driven automatic instalation and dependency resolution of components. A block, which at a start is mainly about sitemap functionallity, would declare what components it depend on.
A big advantage with this approach is that we can start working on better component handling, (class loader isolation, automatic download and automatic dependency resolution), independently from the blocks and hopefully reuse some proven external technology for components.
At a later stage when we have got some experience from the more advanced component handling and the block system we *might* want to integrate them according to the original plan. But then we will know much more about the concequnces.
I really want to understand how this could apply to the portal block, but the cron block is a lot simpler.
For the portal block, which I still don't know that much about, I would assume that it would become a number of components with some kind of dependency description for each and a block with sitemap functionality and a list on what components it depend on.
Hopefully Pier can tell more about his ideas about component handling. My main interest is the sitemap part of the equation.
/Daniel
