[Eclips plugin] Status and todos as of 19/10/2002

[Vincent Massol <vm...@octo.com>]

Hi,

Here is a summary of what we have and what's left to do for the Cactus
Eclipse plugin.

What we have:
-------------

- Basic Launch configuration to start a Cactus test
- Basic Launch shortcut to start a launch configuration on a selected
item in the workbench

Milestone 1 (tentative date: 22/10/2002)
----------------------------------------

Goal: Get a minimalistic Cactus plugin working with hard coded values. 

This includes:
- a minimalistic launch configuration
- a minimalistic launch shortcut
- a minimalistic launch configuration tab group
- no preference page
- the cactus libraries are part of the Cactus plugin

How do we test if it works? By manually starting a simple application
WAR *outside* the IDE using Tomcat 4.x and by running *from the IDE* a
simple cactus test for that simple application. This will prove our
launch configuration is set up correctly (classpath + VM parameters).

Milestone 2 (tentative date: 25/10/2002)
----------------------------------------

Goal: Validate calling Ant script before and after running the tests to
package and deploy the application to the container and start it.

Execute the Cactus Ant script for Tomcat before starting the JUnit Test
Runner (and after). This Ant script needs to be part of the Cactus
plugin and does the following: creates a WAR from the application
sources and start Tomcat. After the test is finished a second script is
run to stop Tomcat.

Milestone completes the proof of concept. It is works well, our plugin
will be a success ... :-)

Milestone 3 (no date defined yet)
---------------------------------

Goal: Make the plugin ready for use.

We will need:
- Add a Cactus preference page (see below for content)
- Support for several containers. This will need to be specified both in
the prefence page (default container to use) and in the Cactus TabGroup
page (container to use for that test).
- On preference page and on Cactus TabGroup page: ability to choose the
port on which the container is started.
- On preference page, ability to specify the working directory where the
Cactus plugin will create all its files (packaged war, app server config
files, etc)
- Minimal plugin documentation

Milestone 4 (no date defined yet)
---------------------------------

Goal: Improved usability and build improvements

- Ability to leave the server running after the test is finished so that
we don't need to start it again for the next test (needs hot redeploy)
- Find a way to automate building the Cactus plugin (using Ant) from
outside Eclipse and make it part of the Gump runs
- Add full plugin documentation and development documentation (for
todos, etc)

What do you think? What have I missed (probably a lot ;-))?

Note: I have committed this doc in the Eclipse plugin CVS directory as
PLAN.txt

Thanks
-Vincent


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