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?
Actually the JavaEE RI distribution doesn't include the admin
console.
The GitHub activity around the admin console issues shows that there
are still many people using it with vanilla GlassFish.
We need to take that into account before making the decision to
remove it.
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?