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Posted to dev@excalibur.apache.org by J Aaron Farr <ja...@gmail.com> on 2005/03/09 16:31:37 UTC
Lowering the barrier to Excalibur
We've mentioned the need to make developing with Excalibur easier
several times on this list. I've been thinking about ways to do this
and here are some of my suggestions:
1. A series of short tutorials: We could create a couple short
tutorials/introductions somewhat like Picocontainer's "One minute
description,Two minute tutorial,Five minute introduction" set. These
could be placed in the wiki.
2. Maven plugins like Turbine's META [1]: What about creating a maven
plugin that could setup a Fortress or ECM development environment in
one command.
3. A simple binary distribution: Unzipping the distribution would give
you all the libraries, example configuration files and the Java
Service Wrapper already setup. Maybe you could have a couple
versions: a lightweight distro which only has a trivial example
included versus a "Kitchen Sink" distro that shows how you can tie
several components together.
4. Eclipse Plugins: I'm doing some plugin development now and maybe
later this year I can write some custom editors for role and
configuration files or for generating meta-data or maybe even a
graphical editor for wiring up the container (drag and drop the
component roles). I'm not sure what type of plugin would be useful,
so I'd appreciate some ideas.
Also, I think we need to emphasize our relationship with other
existing projects more like Turbine, Keel, Cocoon, Xingu, etc. hammett
recently said:
>I think Spring is twenty years ahead of what we have here - in the sense of
>speeding up the development.
Well, perhaps. But perhaps not when you consider Turbine and Cocoon
and all these other projects which use Excalibur. If we can help
users leverage these other libraries and refine Excalibur as an easy
to use common platform, then I think we're not in such dire straits.
Thoughts?
--
jaaron
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Re: Lowering the barrier to Excalibur
Posted by Matthew Harrah <ma...@platinumsolutions.com>.
Things I'd like to see:
1) A configuration analyzer tool with
a) the ability to visualize/navigate/inspect the configuration, ideally
both at run-time and at design time, but I'd settle for either
b) useful, human-readable help for resolving problems and not just
identifying what went wrong. For example, if you have no class for a
given role, it would be great if there were something that told you
exactly what the container were looking for and why, and what steps
could be taken to fix the problem (add xdoclet tags, fix classpath,
create the class with the role, etc). If this can't be done in a tool,
some documentation of this would be better than nothing.
c) the ability to produce documentation of the configuration
d) the ability to validate a configuration's cross-references without
having to spin up the full container
2) Documentation that is more task-oriented and less class-oriented.
Javadoc is great, but it is never going to work for barrier-lowering
documentation. If I am a beginner, I have no idea what class to look in.
I know what I want to accomplish.
On Mar 09, 2005 10:31 AM, J Aaron Farr <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We've mentioned the need to make developing with Excalibur easier
> several times on this list. I've been thinking about ways to do this
> and here are some of my suggestions:
>
> 1. A series of short tutorials: We could create a couple short
> tutorials/introductions somewhat like Picocontainer's "One minute
> description,Two minute tutorial,Five minute introduction" set. These
> could be placed in the wiki.
>
> 2. Maven plugins like Turbine's META [1]: What about creating a maven
> plugin that could setup a Fortress or ECM development environment in
> one command.
>
> 3. A simple binary distribution: Unzipping the distribution would give
> you all the libraries, example configuration files and the Java
> Service Wrapper already setup. Maybe you could have a couple
> versions: a lightweight distro which only has a trivial example
> included versus a "Kitchen Sink" distro that shows how you can tie
> several components together.
>
> 4. Eclipse Plugins: I'm doing some plugin development now and maybe
> later this year I can write some custom editors for role and
> configuration files or for generating meta-data or maybe even a
> graphical editor for wiring up the container (drag and drop the
> component roles). I'm not sure what type of plugin would be useful,
> so I'd appreciate some ideas.
>
>
> Also, I think we need to emphasize our relationship with other
> existing projects more like Turbine, Keel, Cocoon, Xingu, etc. hammett
> recently said:
>
> >I think Spring is twenty years ahead of what we have here - in the
> >sense of
> >speeding up the development.
>
> Well, perhaps. But perhaps not when you consider Turbine and Cocoon
> and all these other projects which use Excalibur. If we can help
> users leverage these other libraries and refine Excalibur as an easy
> to use common platform, then I think we're not in such dire straits.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> jaaron
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@excalibur.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@excalibur.apache.org
>
--
Matt Harrah
Senior Consultant, PlatinumSolutions, Inc.
matt.harrah@platinumsolutions.com
http://www.platinumsolutions.com
Two Discovery Square, 12012 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 445
Reston, VA 20190 PH: 703.471.9793 FAX: 703.637.4464
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Re: Lowering the barrier to Excalibur
Posted by J Aaron Farr <ja...@gmail.com>.
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 16:53:38 +0100, Markus Wolf
<ma...@emedia-solutions-wolf.de> wrote:
> Hi Excalibur list (this is my fist post),
Welcome Markus!
> > 1. A series of short tutorials: We could create a couple short
> > tutorials/introductions somewhat like Picocontainer's "One minute
> > description,Two minute tutorial,Five minute introduction" set. These
> > could be placed in the wiki.
> >
> This is a must. Either in the way pico have it, or in some use cases for
> which Excalibur could be used. The examples in the repository are far
> from beeing useful, because they are too simple and just show a startup.
> A better Swing/SWT example, a simple
> "this-is-my-server-for-some-service" example and something like this
> would be very useful.
Definitely a must.
So what type of examples would be useful? Here are some of my thoughts:
Topics to cover (split across several tutorials/examples):
* Lifecycle Basics (what are the lifecycles)
* Using the configuration API
* Service Manager Lookups
* Role Files and Meta-Info (how to configure)
* Fortress Lifestyles
* Running Environments: Swing vs Console vs Servlet...
What else?
What type of example applications would be useful?
* The current Swing "Hello World Translator" app
* An Excalibur based "Pet Store" app (web or swing)
* Some sort of network server (hosts a simple DB or bean server or something)
--
jaaron
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Re: Lowering the barrier to Excalibur
Posted by Markus Wolf <ma...@emedia-solutions-wolf.de>.
Hi Excalibur list (this is my fist post),
> 1. A series of short tutorials: We could create a couple short
> tutorials/introductions somewhat like Picocontainer's "One minute
> description,Two minute tutorial,Five minute introduction" set. These
> could be placed in the wiki.
>
This is a must. Either in the way pico have it, or in some use cases for
which Excalibur could be used. The examples in the repository are far
from beeing useful, because they are too simple and just show a startup.
A better Swing/SWT example, a simple
"this-is-my-server-for-some-service" example and something like this
would be very useful.
> 2. Maven plugins like Turbine's META [1]: What about creating a maven
> plugin that could setup a Fortress or ECM development environment in
> one command.
>
I think this isn't that good. It may help to setup a project for an
experienced Excalibur developer, but the entry barrier isn't lowered
with that.
> 3. A simple binary distribution: Unzipping the distribution would
> give you all the libraries, example configuration files and the Java
> Service Wrapper already setup. Maybe you could have a couple
> versions: a lightweight distro which only has a trivial example
> included versus a "Kitchen Sink" distro that shows how you can tie
> several components together.
>
That is a good one I think. With a binary distro a new developer would
not have to bother with the dependencies, wich is quite nerving.
> 4. Eclipse Plugins: I'm doing some plugin development now and maybe
> later this year I can write some custom editors for role and
> configuration files or for generating meta-data or maybe even a
> graphical editor for wiring up the container (drag and drop the
> component roles). I'm not sure what type of plugin would be useful,
> so I'd appreciate some ideas.
>
That sounds interesting also, but again IMHO it is for more experienced
developers.
Excalibur is a big tool and if you give 'newbies' tools wich generate
the neccessary code in a certain way they could use it but don't get the
concept of it and will never learn it like when they write it by hand.
Also 5. Documentation:
I think some more and more and much more documentation in each direction
would greatly help developing with Excalibur.
Currently most things I have to figure out by searching/looking through
the sources.
Some documentation of the concept of containers, components and roles
would help clear new developers minds.
Also some documentation of the big picture behind Excalibur would
greatly help I think.
Regards
Markus
--
>
> emedia-solutions wolf
> Wedeler Landstrasse 63
> 22559 Hamburg
> (040) 550 083 70
>
>> web: http://www.emedia-solutions-wolf.de
>> mail: markus@emedia-solutions-wolf.de
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>
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Re: Lowering the barrier to Excalibur
Posted by J Aaron Farr <ja...@gmail.com>.
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:31:37 -0500, J Aaron Farr <ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. Maven plugins like Turbine's META [1]: What about creating a maven
> plugin that could setup a Fortress or ECM development environment in
> one command.
Meant to add a link to META:
[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine/meta/
--
jaaron
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