Kito/all,
Thanks for forwarding this, although the quote of quotes of quotes makes it very hard to read.
I fully agree with Otavio's message that both are developed under the Eclipse Foundation, and users of a product don't really care, if it was developed in repository A or B.
However, what Roberto outlined earlier about continuous copying between MP Config and Jakarta Config makes absolutely no sense.
RC> After the initial copy/paste, how would things evolve?
My intention is that technical evolution would take place in the
MicroProfile Config project. In the event of Jakarta specific
accommodations, we would
1. Cross that bridge when we come to it.
2. Try to come up with solutions that are palatable to both communities, Jakarta
EE and MicroProfile.
3. If absolutely necessary, we would define content in MP Config that
would have the proviso such as "this only takes effect in Jakarta
EE environments". There is ample precedent for such approaches. See
what we did with Faces when Validation was present (in EE) vs. not
present (such as in Tomcat).
RC> Would Jakarta keep the APIs in-sync?
Yes. Every time Jakarta needed a new version, they would pick up a
chosen release of MP config to give the copy/paste treatment to.
MicroProfile consumes Jakarta EE, so there is no MP application or platform without a Jakarta EE platform, at the very least the Core Profile. So Jakarta Config is expected to be available in every profile. If the MP Config API was to co-exist with Jakarta
Config forever, then applications would have to exclude one of them from their build system, otherwise they risk confusion or even mixing them in the same project with unforseen and unpredictable consequences. Especially if a Jakarta EE application using Jakarta
Config API also wanted to use certain MP features like OpenTelemetry, Health, etc. internally configured via MP Config, but potentially even a different version of the API, if e.g. MP 8.1 used a new version of MP Config while Jakarta EE was still on 12 or
13 based on an older MP Config API.
If the API is a drop-in-replacement then nothing keeps the MP projects from using the Jakarta one after the next release. And it does not really matter, if it was maintained in
https://github.com/jakartaee/config or
Otherwise everyone, most importantly developers and users of both MP and Jakarta EE would face a "config hell".
Regards,
Werner
I think that, in the case of config, other specifications can just specify the accepted config properties, regardless of how these properties are provided. The TCK could use system properties as a common config source.
Then Microprofile umbrella can state that these properties are supplied by MP Config, Jakarta EE Platform would state they are supplied by Jakarta Config. Jakarta Core profile wouldn't need to include Jakarta Config. Or it could, but then MicroProfile
would state that Jakarta Config is not required. I'm sure there's a way to define all this in a simple way so that everybody is happy.
I think that makes a lot of sense. Each spec just says what it needs from a "Configuration Provider" and that provider would be either MP Config or Jakarta Config.
With all that, I share the same sentiment with Reza. I always hoped that MP would tend to donate APIs to Jakarta after they become stable, and then completely rely on the Jakarta version of the API.
I agree with this sentiment as well...
We need to also keep in mind the perspective of the end users... they want a "normal" configuration setup that "just works" with all of the different parts of the app. And it would be confusing to have two different namespaces with the same classes. It's
also confusing for the end user to have two different Config specifications, even if they're roughly the same.
I think that, in the case of config, other specifications can just specify the accepted config properties, regardless of how these properties are provided. The TCK could use system properties as a common config source.
Then Microprofile umbrella can state that these properties are supplied by MP Config, Jakarta EE Platform would state they are supplied by Jakarta Config. Jakarta Core profile wouldn't need to include Jakarta Config. Or it could, but then MicroProfile
would state that Jakarta Config is not required. I'm sure there's a way to define all this in a simple way so that everybody is happy.
With all that, I share the same sentiment with Reza. I always hoped that MP would tend to donate APIs to Jakarta after they become stable, and then completely rely on the Jakarta version of the API. But that's not necessary, and I think anything is better
than the current state, when many implementations rely on MP config even for their Jakarta EE functionality, or even worse, MP parts support MP Config while Jakarta EE parts don't.
All the best,
Ondro
I am sure Ed and/or Jared will respond with their own thoughts - in the meantime let me share my two cents, including on some of the broader technical intricacies.
First a purely personal opinion independent of Microsoft. These are some of the intricacies of managing two platforms run by two separate working groups that in practice need to co-exist closely. It's the reason some of us espoused the hope that common
dependencies and possible sources of colliding resources to manage would only be in one direction with the Jakarta EE Core Profile being keenly mindful of the needs of both MicroProfile as well as the other Jakarta EE Profiles (and hopefully in some distant
future other non-Eclipse Foundation platforms that also depend on a stable/high-quality/minimal Core Profile). The hope would have been that platforms such as MicroProfile would deprecate APIs that are effectively standardized onto the shared space of the
Core Profile.
Setting aside the above purely personal opinion, if MicroProfile is very averse to supporting both Jakarta Config and MicroProfile Config, I don't think it's too hard to just keep Config out of the Core Profile including the small handful of Jakarta EE
APIs there (via spec profiles if needed). The major customer pain point is needing to configure the data/external infrastructure related Jakarta EE technologies using old style embedded XML or Java, which are mostly not in the Core Profile anyway.
On 2/17/2025 11:17 AM, Roberto Cortez via config-dev wrote:
If we have separate namespaces and APIs are synced manually / selectively (and evolve independently), I’m guessing that any Jakarta specification would use its own Jakarta Config, and MicroProfile specifications would use MP Config?
In practice, even if Jakarta Config is not part of the Core, if any Core specification adopts it, it would force Jakarta Config with its own API to the MP platform. Is this correct?
Cheers,
I plan to bring this up in the Jakarta EE Steering Committee. The technical debate aside, I think there are also process and branding/IP considerations here. For one, it's important to track down what the existing consensus had been in Jakarta EE WG/Jakarta
Config with regards to namespace. A sanity check from the perspective of branding/IP is also in order as these are in reality two different working groups.
I agree that the most prudent approach is avoiding needlessly introducing mutual inter-dependencies. Both MicroProfile and Jakarta EE should be able to independently evolve their configuration approaches when needed. Separate namespaces with APIs synced
manually/selectively when needed does that well.
On 2/11/2025 11:00 AM, Ed Burns via config-dev wrote:
Even with approaches that allow for mitigating the circular dependencies, I am strongly predisposed to prefer the repackaging approach that allows the content of MicroProfile config to
be accessed by Jakarta specifications using an entirely Jakarta namespace.
Ed
My responses are inline. We will discuss this issue in more detail at this Tuesday's MP Technical call. Please join if you are interested. The joining details can be found
here.
Hi Ed,
Thank you for the response.
1. A technical problem regarding introducing circular dependencies.
Yes, the issue is that MP Config is dependent on CDI. This has been discussed many times, and I believe MP is open to make the necessary adjustme=
