On Fri, 13 May 2005, Jeremy Boynes wrote:
Because we do not maintain API or serialization compatibility.
Okay, that makes sense. I guess it's the serialized configuration
information that's a problem? And if the Maven plugin writes your
serialized stuff and a later version of the Maven plugin reads it, then
things are OK? What if the config was written by tools generated from a
HEAD build and then you try to deploy to that server with the Maven tool? Would that be expected to fail?
The real issue here is that there is no way to specify the dependency version for jars in the root config of the target configuration and as a result then they get loaded from the classloader being used by the deployer. This effectively means the kernel version for all configurations must be exactly the same.
This is an issue for the packaging plugin as it uses a serialized configuration for the deployer.
The lack of compatibility, however, is a problem in general as it means you need to redeploy everything for each new version of Geronimo.
There is a solution to the classloader but I have been holding off making any kernel changes until after certification. If it would be useful, let me know.
Solving the compatibility problem will require the developers to pay attention to versioning. We will need to require that at some point though.
-- Jeremy
