Ajax4jsf foling into RichFaces... not doing one thing and do

[paulkossler]

I do not want to have to load rich-faces to continue to use the ajax4jsf component. I am aware I may be way too late to deter people from changing their minds; however, I have a few points that I have not seen discussed here.

* Combining Ajax4jsf into Richfaces breaks the component engineer concept of "Do one thing and do it well".

-allows for richfaces concerns to creep into design

* This mangles multiple applications using Ajx4jsf concurrently.

- Forces 1 or the other component library (That use Ajax4jsf use in "a component tree"
- Kills component reuse in a page.

I have run into all of these and can give several examples of each; though I will belay. I can see some fiscal forces pushing the combination and while, I can understand the desire, I am concerned when OpenSource is moved to a position primed for leaving the GPL or its variants in favor of a capitalistic resource grab. This always hurts the community of coders. Just look at VC++ with visio before the merger and after. They ripped apart the strong functionality and moved it into the 10k version of VC++ (BTW The main functionality moved was the round-trip UML Java and C++ code engineering).

Maybe I am still a bit of a purist; but I am also a realist. Even with out the fiscal picture. The engineering move makes little sense. Moving a common "component"(Architecturally) of many projects into a single combined library makes no sense. It confuses the purpose of the component with forces from the merging project. It also complicates testing and documentation.

I hope this move is temporary and for good reason; however, I can think of a single non-fiscal reason to make this move.

I would love to be proven wrong.

With all due respect to the excellent folk at JBoss and Redhat,
-Paul Kossler
Sr. Software Architect
CSC.

[paulkossler]

I guess its just a fiscal move. Just received a new "RedHat" subscriber renewal requesting money... I hope this is not the end of open-public forums with JBoss/RedHat.

I am still a fan of JBoss. I use it whenever I can for various institutions.
I hope it still stays open-source open-forum.

-Paul Kossler

[sergeysmirnov]

Paul, the only one problem here are your own imaginations.

The relationship between the Ajax4jsf codebase and RichFaces codebase did not change after the code refactoring. RichFaces depends on Ajax4jsf, but not vice versa.

In plain English, it means you can continue to use a4j: tags, but not use rich: tags.

RichFaces components use loosely coupled architecture. I.e., you can extract them from the final package without harming the rest functionality.

Still have a RichFaces-phobia ?
Instead of richfaces-ui.XXXXX.jar, take core-XXXXXX.jar

For nightly build of 3.1.3 SNAPSHOT, it is:
http://snapshots.jboss.org/maven2/org/richfaces/ui/core/3.1.3-SNAPSHOT/

richfaces-api.jar + richfaces-impl.jar + core.jar = Ajax4jsf

richfaces-ui.jar = core.jar + rich: components

So, use core.jar instead of richfaces-ui.jar and you will be "save" using pure Ajax4jsf.

P.S. I see everybody have a fun playing with misunderstanding what is the difference between the free product and paid subscription. However, RichFaces is not a part of this carnival yet. The primary motivation for refactoring was to separate shared part (-api), deployed once per server from the rest code deployed with each application.

[paulkossler]

Excellent! I most humbly accept the explanation.

I have been working with several other libraries that have moved from the realm of open-source to closed.

Other than that, I could have been imagining some of it :)

Ok, no phobia, for the Rich-Faces. I have run into troubles with cross library use on the same component tree when they both use Ajax4JSF. It seems that one can only work with one at a time.

Once more I am happy to see its my imagination.

-Humbly,
Paul Kossler