Moving from Avalon ?

[James D Carroll <ja...@gmail.com>]

Is there any feeling amongst the team that James will eventually be
moved off of Avalon or that there will be any other significant changes
to the underpinnings of the system?

Thanks,


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Re: Moving from Avalon ?

[Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 4:03 PM, James D Carroll <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any feeling amongst the team that James will eventually be
> moved off of Avalon or that there will be any other significant changes
> to the underpinnings of the system?

this isn't a simple question. avalon, pheonix and excalibur compromise
a complete and complex server building infrastructure. it's easier to
be more precise. the consensus is that we're not going to agree a
roadmap for James 3.0 but just continue to add cool features.

pheonix is a very good and mature server container coupled with
avalon. code of this type isn't easy to write when running on early
JVMs. unless someone new steps up, pheonix will probably remain the
primary platform.

for 1.5 JVMs, there are more choices (for example, MINA). the build
allows multiple deployment modules so alternative server containers
can be supported.

avalon is also used as an IoC container. later generation containers
(eg spring or nano) have many advantages and there are clear pays from
allowing alternative IoC containers to be used for assembly. we have a
spring based application assembler in trunk.

excalibur is a set of mature server components coupled to avalon.
there are several James components that are based around excalibur.
rewriting these components is not worthwhile. these will remain
coupled to avalon.

there are a lot of useful components contained in james 2.x which
really shouldn't be coupled to avalon at all. there are a couple of
strategies being pursued on trunk in parrallel.

the first is that there are a lot of components which are likely to be
generally useful and shouldn't have a logical coupling to the james
server. these are being converted into independent products without
avalon coupling. for example, http://james.apache.org/mailet/.

other components are not likely to be generally useful outside James
but which which shouldn't require a coupling to a particular IoC
container. trunk has been split into modules and refactoring is
ongoing with the view to removing the avalon IoC coupling from those
modules which don't require it.

- robert

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Re: Moving from Avalon ?

[Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 4:03 PM, James D Carroll <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any feeling amongst the team that James will eventually be
> moved off of Avalon or that there will be any other significant changes
> to the underpinnings of the system?

on second thoughts: what don't you like about avalon?

- robert

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