The thing is I have maintained a couple of archetypes the last couple of years and I have chosen to do that in separate repositories because of the ease of use, maintaining and ease of creating new ones. My post processing script is very simple and always the same.
I hope that is enough of a demonstration of giving clear names and easy code.
Why would having multiple repositories make maintaining something more difficult? I do not see that at all. If you need to change something for a specific archetype you only have to do that for that archetype right? No other archetypes needs to change. Also if you write a GUI like mine you actually have to document less as the choices you have are already clearly defined in the GUI. The GUI is dead simple because all the archetypes follow the same routine but with a different combination of tools. The telling names say it all.
So in my experience it is way easier to maintain a very simple archetype than to maintain a difficult one. The more the post processing script has to do the more difficult it will become. Taking versions / incompatibilities / different examples / etc. into account.
Right now I am creating an archetype for Glassfish 6.2.5 with JakartaEE 9.1 and Docker.
That is the only thing I want in that archetype. It is almost trivial for me to make a new one based on another example I already have or update that one to the new version, but it is not as trivial for me to create a PR on the official repo and that is why I haven’t yet.
I see a lot of requests for examples in the issue list (https://github.com/eclipse-ee4j/starter/issues). The more examples you are going to put in the more exception flows (lots of if statements) you need to write if you want to jam that al into one repo. It is fantastically easy to create all those examples in separate archetypes and maintain them as they grow or need a new version.
On another note. Should a fully fletched demo be put into an archetype? If I have to remove 80% of the code every time I need to start a new project I will not use it. How about you? Should examples not be tutorials with a repo attached?
Archetypes are there to generate a specific starting point for developers right? I know I am new to this discussion but if the goal is newcomers isn’t an archetype not a strange approach? I am not trying to be difficult but I honestly don’t understand these choices. I think an archetype should help developers to start coding, not to give a demo.
BTW why do we not have official Glassfish docker images anymore?
The GitHub Actions Pipeline in the current project is already designed to test out all the current options per check-in or PR. Have you had a chance to look at that? Whatever the project structure, it would be important to have such automation in place. I would say these needs are basically the same no matter what the approach.
As I alluded to elsewhere, I personally have a hard time understanding what the value proposition would be for a very basic Archetype for Jakarta EE. Because of the nature of Jakarta EE, the essential Maven structure is always rather simple. Would it really differ very much from the Archetypes that Apache already has in the catalog? Other than the Maven project structure and POM, what other generated code would be included if any? A Servlet or JSF page? Is that really important these day? A REST endpoint? Is that really different enough from what’s there right now?
Anyway, a relatively complete code example of what would be generated would really help me understand (and probably others too). How do you think one could get that? Would it be possible to issue a draft PR? Is it already available to see? That would also help clarify the value for a possible separate Archetype (that’s what I had in mind for JSF as the generated code including the unit tests and index page would likely vary too much from the current REST CRUD example).
From: starter-dev <starter-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Ivo Woltring <ivo@xxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, May 2, 2022 3:07 AM To: starter developer discussions <starter-dev@eclipseorg> Subject: Re: [starter-dev] Starter archetypes / GUI / Issue #67
If you make an archetype that can do a lot of things and configure a lot then it becomes more difficult by definition.
How do you test such an archetype with all its options? Generate all combinations with every change and see if it still works?
DRY is in my opinion not always the best way to go, but I see your point.
What of a compromise?
A bare bones project with only the maven project and Dockerfile of choice and one with all the demo thingies and options in it.
One for new blood to learn and one for those who just want a new project so they can start jamming?
So I had a quick side chat with some of the folks that develop our various Maven Archetypes for Azure just to validate what I had been planning. They confirmed that this is not just doable but very normal for what is typically done in post-processing scripts for non-trivial Archetypes. Indeed it is rather simple compared to much more advanced capabilities like in this example script they shared: https://github.com/microsoft/azure-maven-archetypes/blob/develop/azure-functions-archetype/src/main/resources/META-INF/archetype-post-generate.groovy. This is the use cases that post processing scripts are for after all as opposed to the more basic Archetype templating features.
Still, I am happy to actually prototype out what I had in mind so folks here can take a look and hopefully see for themselves how much not a big deal this really is.
Now, I am not saying that if the generated project varies too much in reaction to parameters that there isn’t a sensible case for creating a separate Archetype. For example, I can see a generated JSF CRUD project being sufficiently different from the current REST CRUD generated code. But fairly minor variations for Jakarta EE versions and target platform? I think that’s no big deal at all. Even the relatively simple Payara Micro Archetype handles Jakarta EE versions just fine as parameters: https://docs.payara.fish/enterprise/docs/documentation/ecosystem/maven-archetype.html.
I have to be honest, I really don’t see why multiple Archetypes would be any easier at all for anyone.
From one Jakarta EE version to another, the only things that would change are Jakarta EE dependency versions, Java SE versions, runtime versions and package names. Those could easily be expressed as variables in the source and filled out using templates in the Groovy post-script (Groovy even has built-in template engines for this). The user simply needs to specify the Jakarta EE version as an Archetype parameter. The Groovy post script can then easily replace a set of variables depending on the user input parameter. This of course in addition to the incremental file replacement technique we already have in the Groovy script. These simple techniques avoid needless complexity for the end user and code duplication while utilizing reasonable modularization.
Before going down the multiple Maven Archetypes road, I suggest taking a look at how that would work. It’s really quite simple, flexible and robust. I can dynamically generate just the Java/Jakarta EE package name for now to demonstrate the technique if you like. I’ll need about a weekend’s time to do that if this is a priority right now.
We need to be able to support multiple versions of Jakarta EE at the same time.
Support for EE 9 and EE 10 is crucial to get out ASAP. For this we have two options:
1. One archetype that supports the generation of multiple Jakarta EE versions
2. One archetype per Jakarta EE version
I think that 2) will get us there faster, and also reduce the complexity of the archetype. Thus apply WET rather than DRY. It would also be clear for the user which version is being generated by this being reflected in the maven coordinates. For example:
Certainly a welcome idea, though hopefully not an "as-is"
donation but a merge?
For example, are separate Archetypes really needed? I think for
folks using it from the command line and IDE, just one Archetype
would be far easier. As such, it is very easy to modularize
Archetypes instead of exposing the user to the complexity of
multiple Archetypes I think (you can hopefully see that in the
code currently in the main branch and various runtime support).
On 4/29/22 3:06 PM, Ivo Woltring wrote:
Hi y’all,
A Couple of weeks ago I was triggered by the new https://start.jakarta.ee/ archetype
and have been playing with it.
The last couple of years I have maintained a couple
of javaEE/jakartaEE maven archetypes and exposed them to the
web: https://ivonet.github.io/archetype/
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