[DISCUSSION] Proposed Task List for Moving Forward with Gradle and the Trunk

[Sharan Foga]

Hi Everyone

A brief update and also some ideas for moving forward with Gradle and the trunk.

For those who missed it, the patch (OFBIZ-7534) to use Gradle in the trunk was 
committed to the trunk yesterday in revision 1751309.  Huge thanks to Taher for 
working so hard and also co-ordinating it. Also thanks very much to everyone 
that contributed, tested and generally gave up some of their time to help out.

This commit is the first step in a series of things that need to be done to 
stabilise the trunk and remove the external dependencies. Once we have done 
this, we will be able to look at creating a new branch.

To achieve that stabilisation,  the following is a suggested current task list 
(in no particular order) : 

1. Replace all the current jars in OFBiz with appropriate remote libraries from 
a download repository (NOTE: There are currently 229 of these and work is 
progressing using a framacalc spreadsheet)
2. Replace all the scripts in /tools with one build.gradle file where each task 
represents the work done by a certain script
3. Change the buildbot to use Gradle (instead of Ant) and deactivate Ant
4. Move all java source files to $component/src/main/java and introduce all 
unit tests in  $component/src/test/java
5. Design and implement the plugin system API. Ideas for things to do:
     -  Create plugin tasks like installPlugin, activatePlugin, 
deactivatePlugin, uninstallPlugin
     - Create a template file for a standard new plugin for developers
     - Create a task called createPlugin which uses the above mentioned 
template file(s) for generating a plugin
6. Investigate how to create a plugin repository with dependencies clearly 
defined, not only on external libraries but also other plugins!
7. Investigate and propose a methodology for maintaining plugins and versioning 
compatibility with OFBiz.
8. Investigate and propose a methodology for upgrading plugins within OFBiz
9. Remove unnecessary build scripts (There is a list of around 60!)
10. Propose the renaming specialpurpose to plugins or such an appropriate name 
for clarity

These are the main things that we are proposing that we focus on, so are happy 
to get any community feedback, help, comments and suggestions.

Thanks
Sharan