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Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633009]

Fri, 15 October 2010 01:49

Eclipse User

Hi all,
I'm Holger from the RAP team and committer on several other Eclipse
projects. I read the proposal of the OSGi Enterprise Tools today and
was really pleased about it.

While reading the proposal an idea came into my mind. I participated in
this year's summer of code and created the so called "WAR Products".
This is a tooling solution to the very painful OSGi based WAR creation
process. We created this tooling because we have hundrets of users for
RAP that have problems deploying WAR archives (over 200 threads in our
forum on this topic).

The tooling is not done yet but in a stable early version. There are a
few bugs that needed to fixed before releasing it. The initial plan was
to contribute the WAR Products back to PDE. But in the meanwhile I
think the OSGi Enterpise Tools are a much better home for it.

The purpose of this mail is to start a discussion about contribution
the WAR Products to the OSGi Enterprise Tools. Please feel free to post
any opinion.

You can find more detailed information about the WAR Products in this
blog post including a p2 repository for installing it:
http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2010/08/17/equinoxrap-war-dep loyment-an-end-to-the-pain/

Regards,

Holger

--
Holger

Staudacher | EclipseSource Karlsruhe

Need professional support for RAP and RCP?
Go to: http://eclipsesource.com/support
Twitter : @hstaudacher
Blog : http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/tag/rap/

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633021 is a reply to message #633009]

Fri, 15 October 2010 02:49

Eclipse User

Hi Holger,

This is a really interesting use case. Looks like a PDE tooling with Web tools flavor. This is exactly where the OSGi Enterprise Tools tries to position.

Using the PDE Product concept is an interesting option of declaring as a set of bundles as a complete Web application. I wonder how generic is this approach. Can you give more details if this is strictly specific to the RAP, or can be reused for other generic use cases?

I will look more deeply in the linked material and will try to educate myself.

Greetings,
Kaloyan

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633025 is a reply to message #633009]

Fri, 15 October 2010 03:12

Eclipse User

In the OSAMI project, we also have similar use-case that needs grouping bundles as deployable units. Our use case is not limited to Web applications. There are of course objections to any kind of composition in osgi because the bundles are the unit of modularity. However, the problems like the ones you describes is a major roadblock to many developers.

We too have investigated the use of Eclipse products and features. The primary concern was that they are strongly coupled with eclipse/equinox concepts. In OSAMI project the requirements make it necessary to work with various sogi frameworks (felix etc.) and osgi-based micro servers. We are playing with the concept of bundle-composite and osgi-runtime definitions, which are just tools. Composite is simply a set of bundles, runtime related semantics and configurations are captured by the runtime definitions. One uses "Run As" on a composite to create a deployment plan and launches the runtime with the proper set of bundles. Runtime definition is an extensible framework which allows people to contribute plugins for different osgi frameworks.

I would like to see more proposals like yours and the one I described to come together to find a generic solution to this "tooling" requirement.

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633054 is a reply to message #633025]

Fri, 15 October 2010 04:33

Eclipse User

@Kaloyan
The tooling is not limited to RAP. It works with all server side
equinox applications.

@Naci
Your right. The tooling is strongly coupled to equinox because it
requires the equinox servlet bridge for validation. But as I read in
the proposal the project targets to extend PDE and WTP. So, I think to
reuse some concepts of these wil make developers feel at home. Anyway,
your right, having a framework independent solution would be cool.

Regards Holger

On 2010-10-15 09:12:27 +0200, Naci Dai <naci.dai@eteration.com> said:

> In the OSAMI project, we also have similar use-case that needs grouping
> bundles as deployable units. Our use case is not limited to Web
> applications. There are of course objections to any kind of
> composition in osgi because the bundles are the unit of modularity.
> However, the problems like the ones you describes is a major roadblock
> to many developers.
>
> We too have investigated the use of Eclipse products and features.
> The primary concern was that they are strongly coupled with
> eclipse/equinox concepts. In OSAMI project the requirements make it
> necessary to work with various sogi frameworks (felix etc.) and
> osgi-based micro servers. We are playing with the concept of
> bundle-composite and osgi-runtime definitions, which are just tools.
> Composite is simply a set of bundles, runtime related semantics and
> configurations are captured by the runtime definitions. One uses "Run
> As" on a composite to create a deployment plan and launches the runtime
> with the proper set of bundles. Runtime definition is an extensible
> framework which allows people to contribute plugins for different osgi
> frameworks.
>
> I would like to see more proposals like yours and the one I described
> to come together to find a generic solution to this "tooling"
> requirement.

--
--
Holger Staudacher | EclipseSource Karlsruhe

Need professional support for RAP and RCP?
Go to: http://eclipsesource.com/support
Twitter : @hstaudacher
Blog : http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/tag/rap/

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633107 is a reply to message #633009]

Fri, 15 October 2010 07:53

Eclipse User

Now I get it clearly. It is really meaningful to have the server-side equinox story in the scope of OSGi Enterprise Tools. This will hopefully lead to better integration with the WTP tooling.

Holger, do you wish to get an active role in this topic as a committer? You already have your GSoC project as a contribution. I guess you have plans to improve it in the future.

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633165 is a reply to message #633107]

Fri, 15 October 2010 10:27

Eclipse User

There are plans to improve this tooling. Especially because we want to
provide this solution to all the RAP users to make the deployment
process easier.

It would be cool to have it in the OSGi Enterprise Tools. But I think
it should not depend on the WTP Tooling to make it usable just with
PDE. I would love to act as a committer and maintainer of this tooling.
The good thing about it, I developed it within the Eclipse.org CVS. So,
it's allready under the EPL and on the eclipse.org servers without any
IP issues.

Regards Holger

On 2010-10-15 13:53:30 +0200, Kaloyan Raev <kaloyan.raev@sap.com> said:

> Now I get it clearly. It is really meaningful to have the server-side
> equinox story in the scope of OSGi Enterprise Tools. This will
> hopefully lead to better integration with the WTP tooling.
> Holger, do you wish to get an active role in this topic as a committer?
> You already have your GSoC project as a contribution. I guess you have
> plans to improve it in the future.

--
--
Holger Staudacher | EclipseSource Karlsruhe

Need professional support for RAP and RCP?
Go to: http://eclipsesource.com/support
Twitter : @hstaudacher
Blog : http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/tag/rap/

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633489 is a reply to message #633165]

Mon, 18 October 2010 04:17

Eclipse User

Holger, it's great you want to be actively involved. I will add your name as a committer in the project proposal and will include the Equinox server-side use story in the description. Could you send me your e-mail address at kaloyan.raev (at) sap.com?

Regarding the WTP dependencies. This is a matter of packaging. You can easily keep the tooling needed for RAP dependent only on PDE. But for other use cases, an "optional" features can be implemented that depend also on WTP.

Some time ago I came across a big article by Angelo Zerr about a use case on Equinox server-side:
http://angelozerr.wordpress.com/about/osgi-equinox-in-a-serv let-container/
This article make use not only of PDE tooling, but also on some WTP tools. I suppose that the user experience in some of the steps described can be greatly improved by a better integration between the PDE and WTP tooling.

However, the integration of the Equinox server-side story is just a suggestion by me. It's not something mandatory and it will be up to the interested committers and contributors to drive it in this direction if they see any benefit.

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633636 is a reply to message #633489]

Mon, 18 October 2010 11:26

Eclipse User

Email address sent.

Regards Holger

On 2010-10-18 10:17:25 +0200, Kaloyan Raev <kaloyan.raev@sap.com> said:

> kaloyan.raev (at) sap.com

--
--
Holger Staudacher | EclipseSource Karlsruhe

Need professional support for RAP and RCP?
Go to: http://eclipsesource.com/support
Twitter : @hstaudacher
Blog : http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/tag/rap/

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #633847 is a reply to message #633636]

Tue, 19 October 2010 11:05

Eclipse User

Excellent to see other people have worked on this. From the sounds of it this is just support for WAR files. Holger, did you guys look at OSGi's Web Application Bundles or even better include support for them. Currently it's really painful to create them as you have to hack a WAR project in to the right shape.

Chris.

Re: Contribution suggestion: WAR Products [message #634065 is a reply to message #633847]

Wed, 20 October 2010 07:54

Eclipse User

Hi Chris,
your right. Currently the tooling only supports the WAR file creation.
I think OSGi Web App Bundles could be the next step. As I mentioned
eralier, the tooling is not done right now but will be continued.
Thanks for the input.

Regards Holger

On 2010-10-19 17:05:51 +0200, Christopher Frost <frostc@vmware.com> said:

> Excellent to see other people have worked on this. From the sounds of
> it this is just support for WAR files. Holger, did you guys look at
> OSGi's Web Application Bundles or even better include support for them.
> Currently it's really painful to create them as you have to hack a WAR
> project in to the right shape.
>
> Chris.

--
--
Holger Staudacher | EclipseSource Karlsruhe

Need professional support for RAP and RCP?
Go to: http://eclipsesource.com/support
Twitter : @hstaudacher
Blog : http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/tag/rap/

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