Re: [RT] CLI and Forrestbot (was Re: New Forrestbot in the works

[Upayavira <uv...@upaya.co.uk>]

Nicola Ken,

Long time no speak! Hello again!

> Upayavira wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> Jeff,
>>
>> Is there a reason why you use Ant for this sort of thing, as opposed 
>> to a more pure Cocoon CLI/bean approach? (other than because the 
>> CLI/bean isn't good enough yet).
>
>
> Jeff is correctly making the current system better. It's not a "final" 
> thing, as nothing is final, so we should eventually discuss options soon.
>
>> To my mind, this is the sort of thing that I see the CLI/bean doing 
>> eventually. It can already send pages directly to a modifiable 
>> source, so with an SCPSource you could remove the final 'copy' stage. 
>> There is already a CVSSource which can be used to read out of a 
>> repository (although that would require a change to your sitemap, 
>> which is not preferable). The cli.xconf can now handle multiple sites 
>> (using <uris> elements). Then, once the CLI/bean can do all this, it 
>> can either be run from the command line via cron, or potentially be 
>> called from within a web interface (run as an Avalon component via 
>> the flow).
>>
>> Can you see the CLI/bean taking over this role at some point in the 
>> future, or do you think there is some intrinsic role for Ant to play 
>> here?
>
>
> I didn't want to come out with this discussion now, but I see Forrest 
> running *live* using CVSSource, doing multiple sites and playing nice 
> with an Apache proxy in front, for added speed. In this way Cocoon 
> works as a "live CLI", doing slow transformations at specified expire 
> times and driven by Apache.
>
> Of course, if this works, it would be trivial to make the CLI work on 
> this. But it's still some time off, and the Forrestbot is being used 
> and already relied upon. We need to do the changes being discussed, 
> clean the build and source copying, and then have time to see what 
> will be missing from a CLI solution you highlight and fill in the gaps 
> (for example the webapp).
>
> ATM I think that we will still need some sort of Ant frontend, and of 
> course the webapp, but I hope that many things can be done easier by 
> Cocoon.

Thanks. You've answered my question. I wasn't thinking of anything 
immediately, and I'm sure Jeff's improvements are needed.

The background to my question was the fact that, to-date I've been 
wondering what on earth this forrestbot thing is. It was with Jeff's 
post that the penny dropped. I then started wondering if some (or all) 
of that functionality could be taken over by the CLI/bean. And you're 
saying that this could be so, which has answered my question.

I realise that any transition from a stable working system to a newer 
(better?) one needs to be managed well, so I wasn't proposing to do 
anything quickly. It just helps to guide my planning of what I want to 
do next on the cli/bean, and tells me that my ideas for a bean that can 
be used with cron or as a webapp and that can collect data from 
whereever and deliver it wherever could actually be useful to people. 
That always helps!

Regards, Upayavira