[gradebook2-dev] Sakai target version for developing tools

[Jon Gorrono]

Developing against trunk is a pretty generally accepted practice...
keeping trunk up to trunk is actually necessary and required
regardless of whether you decide to defer it or not. And deferring it
usually only causes more headaches.  Keeping branches stable should
not be hindered by development activity in them.

Building sakai is already a requirement for development in most tools
in sakai.... and I can't see how you could develop in gb2 without do
that. Adding one more goal to that doesn't seem like a huge deal to
me.

Another possible development 'voodoo' that would help is to use the
maven eclipse plugin ... this plugin appears to yank all declared
dependencies into the maven repo... and so we could declare all the
dependencies we need in dev mode poms (and so not effect maven builds)
and they should end up in the repo thanks to the plugin.


On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Thomas Amsler <tpamsler at ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> We are trying to improve the gradebook2 development and setup process.
> I would like to know how other tool developers in the Sakai community
> handle the following:
>
> Question:
> What version of Sakai should we develop against?
> The focus of this question is about maven dependencies, especially
> [kernel, edu-service, ...]. We could develop against trunk or one of
> the released versions. There are pos/cons for either choice.
>
> Using trunk: (2.9-SNAPSHOT)
> Pro:
> - We would "support" the latest Sakai dependent libraries and structures
> - ...
> Cons:
> - One has to build Sakai in order to get all the maven dependencies
> - May need to reference libraries that have been deployed to Tomcat,
> requiring the user to add a TOMCAT classpath variable besides M2_REPO
> - ...
>
> Using latest released version: (2.8.x)
> Pro:
> - We should be able to download all the maven dependencies from one of
> the available maven repositories, and thus not requiring to build
> Sakai first
> - Fewer surprises w.r.t. changing dependencies
> - ...
> Cons:
> - If dependencies in trunk change significantly, it would take some
> time to adjust the tool as new versions become available.
> - Undocumented development and setup process for institutions that
> need to develop/run against trunk
> - ...
>
> Using the version that the application is QAed against: (e.g. in case
> of gradebook2, that would be 2.7.x)
> Pros:
> - We should be able to download all the maven dependencies from one of
> the available maven repositories, and thus not requiring to build
> Sakai first
> - Fewer surprises w.r.t. changing dependencies
> - Smoother transition from DEV to TEST since we use the same version.
> - ...
> Cons:
> - If dependencies in newer versions (including trunk) change
> significantly, it would take some time to adjust the tool as new
> versions become available.
> - Undocumented development and setup process for institutions that
> need to develop/run against a newer Sakai version
> - ...
>
> There are many more Pros/Cons than the ones that I have listed above,
> and the ones that I have listed may not be valid. That's why I would
> like to hear from the Sakai community about your experience on this
> topic.
>
> Thank you very much for your time.
>
> Best,
> -- Thomas Amsler
>
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-- 
Jon Gorrono
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