[Building Sakai] MercuryPortal and CharonPortal

[John Bush]

We don't actually use the XsltPortal anymore
(org.theospi.portfolio.portal.web.XsltPortal)

When the SkinnableCharonPortal came around in 2.5? we switched to
using that instead.  Thats the stuff in osp/xsltcharon.

Technically, the xsltcharon project could be moved out of osp, its not
really related to much osp specific stuff, mostly just osp wrappers.
But I think I kinda agree with Beth, that this isn't a good use of
time, I don't really see the benefit, other than tidyness.

>From my perspective the XsltPortal and CharonPortal could be removed.
I don't know anyone using the XsltPortal after 2.5, certainly none of
our clients.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:50 AM, Noah Botimer <botimer at umich.edu> wrote:
> Steve,
>
> In looking at a maintenance issue a while back, I noticed this extension of CharonPortal and a bunch of code duplication with SkinnableCharonPortal, etc. I also wondered if CharonPortal could go away.
>
> I didn't dig far enough to say for sure, but my guess is that we could move this extension over to Skinnable. However, I would bet it's at least a day or two of work, sorting out what base behavior is overridden versus used, and what of that might be duplicated/changed in Skinnable. I would classify this as thankless slogging.
>
> The idea has also been tossed around of moving the XSL/OSP portal into the main portal module, since its relationship to the rest of OSP is now minimal. If we moved forward on converting OSP, this might be easier than sorting out how to break out the main portal stuff.
>
> I would say, though, that something like this would need careful collaboration with rSmart, since they have the best knowledge and most usage of this portal. There might be traps to avoid or things that could be trimmed/changed easily to simplify the process.
>
> Thanks,
> -Noah
>
> On Jul 21, 2010, at 7:45 AM, Steve Swinsburg wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've been doing some work on the portal and am interested in the MercuryPortal and CharonPortal, and whether or not they can be removed.
>>
>> First the MercuryPortal. It has a note in the source that it is the developers portal. But as a developer, I've never used it before. Also, on sakai-dev there was a proposal back in May to remove it as it is disabled by default and may present risks, since it is unmaintained.
>>
>> Next up is the CharonPortal. For all intents and purposes this looks unused, being superseded by the SkinnableCharonPortal which is the one that is configured in the portal web.xml and is actually used. Grepping through the source shows no references to CharonPortal and it even outputs its' markup via out.println(s); statements so I am guessing this is definitely unused.
>>
>> To test my theories I removed the mercury-portal from the base pom and deleted mercury.war from Tomcat and CharonPortal.java from portal-impl. Built and started up. All is well.
>>
>> What are your thoughts?
>>
>> Note: I originally posted this to the maintenance team but we've moved it to sakai-dev for wider discussion. I have since learnt that the OSP portal depends on the CharonPortal so another possible way forward is to move CharonPortal to the OSP project (Thanks David H). However, the OSP portal also depends on SkinnableCharonPortal so that may have implications for making OSP an indie release, or at least something to be mindful of (separate issue).
>>
>> cheers,
>> Steve
>>
>> p.s. there are also mercury related images in reference which can go along with the portal if it is removed.
>>
>>
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-- 
John Bush
602-490-0470