Hello Kevin,
Thank you very much for wanting to help us improve Orion!
Of course we are very happy about this strong following and I see many areas
where you can contribute. The first one is obviously documentation. More
documentation is being pushed out now but there will still be holes to fill. For
now, contributing to orionsupport.com is a very good thing and I want to thank
Joseph again for doing that. However, I will make sure that we have a structure
for users to contribute to other parts as well and I will get back to this
subject on the list during the week.
About the installer however, there is just a tool like that in the works that
sets Orion up for the used OS (like setting up to switch user from root to a
regular user on unix system, create associations between .ear and .war
extensions with Orion in a few OSes, etc.). I definately wouldn't mind Open
Sourcing any of the Orion tools, but whether we can do so depends on how much
the specific tool uses parts of the interals of Orion and how much it uses
something that can be abtracted into a nicer API. Obvious good contributions
would be well documented examples with step-by-step guides on how to do
something using Orion.
Another idea I get right away would be to make a tool that sets up a specific
data-source with Orion. This tool could provide a drop-down list of the
different data-sources configurations that the community is using, with links to
the drivers that are used, etc. If people contribute their working data-source
configurations we should be able to collect sources for a huge number of
different databases.
I will try to make a list of areas where it would be easy to contribute in
documentation and in source code and get back to this. Of course we are not
expecting you to get nothing out of this yourself if you contribute, so there
should be some kind of reward connected to contributing. Any ideas?
Regards,
Karl Avedal
Kevin Duffey wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Since so many of us love Orion, or are trying to love it but have problems
> understanding some things, how bougt we help out the Orion team by
> documenting as much as we can? I for one have been using it for quite some
> time and have some knowledge of some areas. I would love to learn other
> areas as they become available. Joseph is doing a good job with
> orionsupport.com, and he has asked for any contributions. For those of us
> that feel we know the product somewhat well, lets do our part. Hell, unlike
> other products, Orion is free for everything except production, and that
> cost is a fraction of the cost of other app servers.
>
> Also, while the team hasn't opened up the source or anything for us to
> contribute, I was thinking of doing a Wizard installer in Java, but I am not
> very good with SWING. Right now you unzip, configure the xml files, and let
> it rip. Maybe a simple installer that the team can use and package that has
> a wizard interface for setting up the common areas would be nice. Anyone
> want to help with this? Would the Orion team mind if we help out in these
> areas? May be a while as I don't have much time, but it might help on the
> installation woes some people seem to have.
>
> If anyone to everyone is in agreement (including Orion team), lets help kick
> the Orion App Server into high gear so it can kick the crap out of those
> much much much more expensive app servers that don't quite follow the
> standards as well. If all in favor, maybe we can start off a chapter index
> in this list (or on the orionsupport.com site) and contribute to areas
> needing documentation as well as writing those. Also, I believe a good
> "review" of docs by all involved would allow for the most accurate docs
> instead of relying on faith of one person. No offense, but I sure don't want
> people reading what I write assuming its 100% right. I would rather have
> others look it over and make sure it makes sense, is easy to follow along
> and actually works as stated.
>
> Awaiting replies.
