Tiles 1 compatibility package

[Antonio Petrelli <an...@gmail.com>]

Hi all!
I noticed a lot of people having difficulty migrating from Struts 1 -
Tiles 1 to Struts 2 and Tiles 2, so I am wondering if we need to
create a sort of "compatibility package", i.e. something that:
- read the 1.1-style Tiles definition files;
- defines taglibs that externally have the same syntax as the older one.
It will be used in place of the "official" version of Tiles 2 and,
with a small effort (essentially replacing all JSP headers declaring
Tiles taglib and specifying a different DefinitionsReader inside the
web.xml) allows to reuse old Tiles files.

Thoughts?
Antonio

Re: Tiles 1 compatibility package

[Antonio Petrelli <an...@gmail.com>]

2007/4/11, Greg Reddin <gr...@gmail.com>:
> On 4/11/07, Antonio Petrelli <an...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A possible solution would be to provide the compatibility layer and
> immediately deprecate it.  That way people can have a migration path but
> they will know we don't intend to support it indefinitely.

+1

> I do think we will have to provide some sort of migration path.  I doubt
> many people will jump headfirst into Tiles 2 without one.

There's a JIRA issue for this:
http://issues.apache.org/struts/browse/TILESSHARED-4

Antonio

Re: Tiles 1 compatibility package

[Greg Reddin <gr...@gmail.com>]

On 4/11/07, Antonio Petrelli <an...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all!
> I noticed a lot of people having difficulty migrating from Struts 1 -
> Tiles 1 to Struts 2 and Tiles 2, so I am wondering if we need to
> create a sort of "compatibility package"


I've struggled with this very issue.  One one hand people are reluctant to
upgrade if it means a complete rewrite of their pages.  On the other hand,
what's the motivation to refactor and use the new API if we maintain a
compatible API?

A possible solution would be to provide the compatibility layer and
immediately deprecate it.  That way people can have a migration path but
they will know we don't intend to support it indefinitely.

I do think we will have to provide some sort of migration path.  I doubt
many people will jump headfirst into Tiles 2 without one.

Greg