1 2 Previous Next 23 Replies Latest reply on Oct 9, 2006 8:11 AM by marklittle

    Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience

    marklittle

      The machine I was building the TB on had a disk failure last night, so I've been trying to set this up from scratch on Mac OS X. Not something I've had to do in a while. I'd forgotten how many steps you have to go through. Some observations:

      (i) we should have a single rule for configuring and running the demo. Multiple rules are fine for the user who wants to go through each step at a time, but I think the 80/20 rule needs to apply here.

      (ii) the configuration step should cache the answers from each run and echo them back if you want to re-run. That way you don't have to answer all of the same set of questions again if only one thing needs changing. Where I've used this approach before you see the default answer in [], so for example:

      [input] Enter the path to the root of your local JBoss Application Server Installation (required for access to JBoss libraries):

      would be

      [input] Enter the path to the root of your local JBoss Application Server Installation (required for access to JBoss libraries): [/usr/local/jboss-4.0.4]

      and

      [input] Enter the host address of the JBoss Application Server on which your deployed JBoss ESB is running (for "localhost" simply press return):

      would be

      [input] Enter the host address of the JBoss Application Server on which your deployed JBoss ESB is running: [25]

        • 1. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
          kurtstam

          (i) This can be best accomplished by introducing a 'deployTrailblazer' task. :)

          (ii) We should get rid of the ant wizzard all together and just have one loanbroker.properties file (we check in an -example) just like we do for the esb itself. There is nothing better then simplicity. We could annotate this file with info on where this parameter is going to be used. Just so that it becomes easier to check up on yourself. (Currently the ant wizzard still has problems with slashes, spaces and it doesn't keep track of your previously given answers)

          • 2. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
            marklittle

             

            "kurt.stam@jboss.com" wrote:
            (i) This can be best accomplished by introducing a 'deployTrailblazer' task. :)


            Sounds just about perfect. Let me guess, something like

            <target name="deployTrailblazer"
             depends="configure, deploy"/>
            


            ;-)


            (ii) We should get rid of the ant wizzard all together and just have one loanbroker.properties file (we check in an -example) just like we do for the esb itself.


            That sounds good too. We already tell people they have to edit the loanbroker.properties-template file anyway.


            There is nothing better then simplicity. We could annotate this file with info on where this parameter is going to be used. Just so that it becomes easier to check up on yourself. (Currently the ant wizzard still has problems with slashes, spaces and it doesn't keep track of your previously given answers)


            • 3. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
              kurtstam

              Ok I'll get on it. Can I use copy-paste for (i)? :)

              • 4. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                marklittle

                Oh go on then. But I retain copyright, ok ;-)?

                • 5. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                  tfennelly

                  Just be aware that that "wizzard" is doing a little more than simply taking input from the user. That script is working out some of the relative paths for the user, which I can't see anyone reasonably arguing against. I'd think it would be better to iron out whatever issues we have with slashes etc They can't be that difficult to fix + add the "use last config settings" options too.

                  Example properties files etc are great for people that know their way around whatever it is you're configuring (i.e. us), but they're not all that great for people that don't know their way around.

                  Suppose all I'm saying is... think before throwing out the baby with the bath water :-)

                  • 6. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                    marklittle

                    We need to make it simpler for end-users. Caching the information from previous runs (either by the script or by simply asking the user to edit the loanbroker.properties file before running the script) is useful in achieving this. If you think that the script is doing much more then we do need to ensure that any changes don't look like one step forward and 2 steps backwards.

                    • 7. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                      kurtstam

                      Oh yeah there are problems with the relative path too. I forgot. Thx Tom.

                      • 8. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                        tfennelly

                         

                        "mark.little@jboss.com" wrote:
                        We need to make it simpler for end-users. Caching the information from previous runs (either by the script or by simply asking the user to edit the loanbroker.properties file before running the script) is useful in achieving this. If you think that the script is doing much more then we do need to ensure that any changes don't look like one step forward and 2 steps backwards.


                        Caching the info would not be a hard thing to do.

                        • 9. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                          tfennelly

                           

                          "kurt.stam@jboss.com" wrote:
                          Oh yeah there are problems with the relative path too. I forgot. Thx Tom.


                          But the solution to that isn't automaticlly a 180 degree u-turn to dump the whole thing! Has anyone actually attempted to fix these issues?

                          • 10. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                            marklittle

                             

                            "tfennelly" wrote:
                            "kurt.stam@jboss.com" wrote:
                            Oh yeah there are problems with the relative path too. I forgot. Thx Tom.


                            But the solution to that isn't automaticlly a 180 degree u-turn to dump the whole thing! Has anyone actually attempted to fix these issues?


                            So precisely what do you think this discussion is all about?! It is about the best way to address the issues I have raised. I find it's always a good idea to know what the problem is and have a solution (or two) before trying to fix it!

                            • 11. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                              tfennelly

                              Firstly, I'd just like to apologise to Kurt there. After looking at my last post I can see that it's tone is not as intended. Poor form on my behalf - sorry Kurt :$

                              I'm not sure of all the issues on this other than what's been flying around in emails over the past while. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think there's anything in JIRA.

                              The issues that I'm aware of are:
                              1. Intermittent issues with the direction of slashes in some of the resource paths. Not sure which ones??
                              2. Relative path issues caused by the fact that the download dist has a different directory structure to that checked out from SVN. The script assumes the SVN structure.

                              I may be wrong, but my guess is that these issues should not be to difficult to put right, once we nail them down precisely.

                              • 12. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                                marklittle

                                Thanks for the feedback Tom. Sounds like we need to register a few issues in JIRA then once we know what the problems are.

                                Cheers.

                                • 13. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                                  tfennelly

                                  OK, so I think I've sorted out a fair few of the issues with the trailblazer, it's configuration etc.

                                  Firstly, there was a multitude of issues with it from all sorts of sources - which sorta proves that we're not testing it enough after making changes to the code... hint hint ;-)

                                  So:
                                  1. The config is cached, so now you get what you entered last time as the defaults.
                                  2. Hopefully the slashes issue is a thing of the past now too - we catch the AS home param supplied on input and do a "fixup" on it before using it.
                                  3. The "ant configure" task does everything for you now (caveat: unless there's something else I don't know about), so you don't have to remember (or know about) to deploy the loanbroker war file to the AS. I only realised yesterday that I was supposd to be doing this!!

                                  The relative paths issue still exists - we can tackle that next week :-) I've also identified a few other issues/inconsistencies that I think need looking at - the notification methods are a bit dodge I think, the process(File) is dodge too now that we've got the Message types.

                                  If people could do an update and give it a whirl it would be great. Lets see how long we can keep it working this tim ;-)

                                  • 14. Re: Trailblazer out-of-the-box experience
                                    marklittle

                                     

                                    "tfennelly" wrote:

                                    The relative paths issue still exists - we can tackle that next week :-) I've also identified a few other issues/inconsistencies that I think need looking at - the notification methods are a bit dodge I think, the process(File) is dodge too now that we've got the Message types.


                                    I think that given the overall Rosetta architecture, what's there now in temrs of Messages is good enough until dispatchers go in to the next release. There are more important areas to concentrate on IMO.

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