Nat, There is some work going on right now for Geronimo 2.x to make
the admin console more modular and extensible. It is conceptually
similar to what you found for Geronimo 1.x but is based on a newer
version of pluto which has better support for dynamically adding
portal pages.
One of the primary use cases sounds in line with what you describe
where a component, application, or plugin needs to add new portlets
to the admin console. We're still ironing out some of the details
but the basic idea will be that you will package your portlets in a
WAR and use a gbean provided by Geronimo to add your portal pages to
the admin console's navigator.
This document describes how to create and deploy your portlet WAR:
http://portals.apache.org/pluto/v11/deploying.html
All of that information is relevant except for the part titled
"Portal Page Configuration". That will be handled by a gbean
referenced from your WAR's deployment plan instead of by editing an
XML file.
Right now the code is in sandbox/portals and there's a README in
there if you would like to build it and try it out. Feedback is most
definitely welcome. I would like to move the code into server/trunk
soon after a 2.0 branch is cut.
Best wishes,
Paul
On Jul 12, 2007, at 3:03 PM, Nathaniel Harward wrote:
I had a discussion on IRC #geronimo about this, and it was suggested
that I post to the G dev list to continue the discussion:
The Goal:
To put a GUI front end on a downloadable 3rd party Geronimo
plugin,
preferably in the adminstration console where administrative
security is
already handled and configuration of components is natural. As far
as I
can gather, right now I would have to have my plugin modify the
portlet
configuration files directly and force a console reload on startup for
this to happen, but I have also only been looking at the 1.1 code line
so far.
From the IRC discussion:
I chatted briefly with kevan and jgenender about this, and they
suggested that instead of using 1.1 I focus on the 2.0 line since
there
was work being done in the area of the administration console. There
seemed to be some minor discord about where exactly this new code
lives
(sandbox vs. trunk) and when exactly it will be released (2.0 or
later).
For my part, I'm interested to know what/where this new code is (and
when it will be released is always good too), and what I will need
to do
as the plugin writer to integrate my portlet (or something other
than a
portlet?) into the new and improved console.
Any help or pointers to the code are much appreciated.
Thanks,
Nat Harward
P.S. -- for those interested this is for a plugin for Terracotta
clustering for Geronimo.