The admin console remains a key piece of GlassFish, I don't think
this is something that can be removed.
I'm not sure. The admin console is essentially a client of the REST services, which asadmin and nadmin also use. So the commandline tool is a pretty good alternative. Additionally, if we move GlassFish more into the role of an RI (which is funny, since Jakarta EE doesn't have an official RI), is an admin console really needed?
Both Woodstock and JSFTemplating are in life-support mode, they only
exist because of GlassFish and are not updated regularly.
A complete re-write of the admin console requires a lot of work, so
fixing Woodstock for the time being seems to be the best option.
Indeed. I've been mulling over how to facilitate a rewrite for some time. It's a lot of work, though not particularly difficult, just work. I've actually done such a rewrite of an existing admin console a few years ago, and from memory I think it took 2 months or so with 2 devs. Still, those are resources we don't have right now.
Both projects have been mavenized and can updated easily compared to
how they were when donated to eclipse.
Yes, much thanks for that! That made a big, big difference!
Some of the issues related to dojo have been addressed in the master
branch of Woodstock (5.0-SNAPSHOT), not sure if there is a released
version of that available yet ; IIRC Arjan was trying to make a
release some time ago.
new 6.x releases? For me, this UI
technology is very old and may not be compatible with the
incoming updated browsers. And also, what is the current state
of JSFTemplating and Woodstock projects? Are they updated
regularly?
I have been playing with the admin GUI code for
the past few days, and frankly the existing code is
written in a truly old style JSP/JSF code (For me it
is not nicely written :()
It's not JSP, it's another templating engine called
JSFTemplate. JSFTemplate is an alternative to both JSP
and Facelets. It's not based on either, and is a
complete independent so-called VDL (View Definition
Language). It's not only old, but also very much unused
outside of GlassFish. In the admin console JSFTemplate
is combined with the Woodstock component library.
Woodstock was more or less intended for
internal applications at Sun, and AFAIK saw little to no
adoption outside Sun either.
As I understand
(although I disagree with
this), Eclipse Glassfish
project is no longer
considered as usable in
production environments.
One of the reason is that
not releasing frequently and
updating the codebase
regularly. Frankly, I have
not fully understood the
meaning of the Eclipse
Glassfish project.
Are we trying
to have implement only
useless RI? Should we see
the Eclipse Glassfish as a
school project? It seems
strange to put a Admin
Console UI that doesn't work
correctly into the release.
I am more than
happy to spare more time if
I truly understand the
project aim.
I hear you,
though the admin console
itself it's not useless,
just largely antiquated.
And yes, not including
it has been considered.
But even if
excluding it for just
this release, who has
the resources available
to create a new admin
console? Without any
plan it would be gone
from GF indefinitely I'm
afraid.
You're
right, the admin
console is not
even antiquated
in the output it
generates, but
even more in the
source beneath
it. With every
release with
have to drag the
pre-historic JSFTemplate, Woodstock, and their dependencies along
kicking and
screaming.
I
would not be
surprised if
GlassFish is
currently the
only application
using
JSFTemplate/Woodstock.
Rewriting
the admin
console using
current day
Faces could be
done, but it's
not a trivial
task I'm afraid
in terms of
time. Having
this taken care
of for the GF 6
final release is
basically undoable with the resource we have available.
I
am currently
looking over
admin part
(admin GUI) of
the Glassfish
and looks like
that lots of
error/bugs
exist in the
current code
base. Latest
browsers such
as Firefox
complaints
about lots of
_javascript_
errors and
some pages are
not
displayed/run
correctly.
Is
anybody
experience
with the same?
I think that
the current
code has not
been updated
regarding the
latest browser
compatibility
etc.
I
wonder that
before
releasing the
GF 6 Final, do
we need to
have fully
usable admin
console?