Hi Everyone, I am very happy to announce that after a lot of research I finally have a little working PoC solution for the OFBiz plugin system. I believe this system is very simple yet very powerful with the following simple API tasks
1- ./gradlew createPlugin: creates a plugin from templates 2- ./gradlew installPlugin: downloads a plugin and all its dependency plugins from a maven repository(it could be local, remote, jcenter, whatever), extracts the archives, add the plugin to component-load.xml, and calls the install task. 3- ./gradlew uninstallPlugin: calls the uninstall task, removes the plugin from component-load.xml, and deletes the plugin (but ignores dependencies). 4- ./gradlew publishPlugin: create a maven compatible package that can be published to either a local or a remote repository. So what is very powerful about this solution? Well, you use the maven format for your packages, so you can host it on any maven repository including jcenter. Also, you have a standard way of declaring dependencies (pom.xml) and you pretty much gain all the benefits that comes with maven packages (versioning, dependencies, meta data, etc ...) The solution can be expanded later on, but I think the above provides a good starting point. Ideas? Feedback? Should I go ahead and fine-tune / share the PoC on JIRA? Regards, Taher Alkhateeb On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 6:17 PM, Jacques Le Roux < jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com> wrote: > Le 25/08/2016 à 16:39, Taher Alkhateeb a écrit : > >> Hello Everyone, >> >> I need some opinions for a PoC that I'm working on for the plugin system >> (OFBIZ-7972) and appreciate your help: >> >> repository design >> ---------------------- >> I am thinking of just having a very simple web server denoted as a >> repository where the plugins are just zip or tar archives that expand to >> OFBiz components. For example, if the repository URL is www.example.com >> then the plugin could be www.example.com/plugins/Specif >> icPluginHere.tar.gz. >> It downloads to the specialpurpose (hopefully renamed to plugins) to >> expand >> and install >> > > I'm for removing the difference between specialpurpose and hot-deploy. > Why? Simplification! > > We should remove specialpurpose and rename hot-deploy into plugins. > This also means that we should have a Gradle task to automatically > download and install a plugin. > All current specialpurpose would become plugins available in the repo > easily installable using something like > gradlew installPlugins plugins1Name plugins2Name etc. > I don't see the need to have a differentiated task to install only 1 plugin > > The repo should be installed on the new OFBIZ-VM2 > > We know that, like for the misnamed hot-deploy, installing a plugin will > need a restart of the OFBiz instance. > So this can't be dynamically done (at least for now), but need to be at > least automated. > > The only current issue is if we have dependencies among plugins. > For now we can simply documented them for users to set their own > component-load.xml > > BTW as a reminder, after OFBIZ-6760 we need to update > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Component+ > and+Component+Set+Dependencies > And possibly complete the possible existing interdependencies between > specialpurpose components, though I can't remember any, but I feel I'm > wrong here. > > > dependencies >> ------------------ >> This is a complicated subject, and there are a few ideas I have in mind: >> - Try to deploy the gradle project dependency model >> > > I'd like to know if you crossed issues with that and if yes what they are. > If it's the case can't we share the burden? > > - Alternatively write custom dependency resolution >> > > Please no :) > > However, this might be too complex to kickstart the project, and I think >> perhaps we can start without a dependency management system and implement >> it in a later stage. >> > > Yes why not? Baby steps for the win > > Jacques > > > >> Thank you in advance for your help and feedback. >> >> Taher Alkhateeb >> >> >
