[atf-dev] Removal of the personality support in ATF

[Robert Goodman <goodmanr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The ATF team is planing to drop the
personality support. This functionality includes the following

1. Personality Builder - The personality
generates plugins that implement personality extensions based on certain
aspects of the target AJAX runtime

2. Personality Runtime - The personality runtime provided the base functionality
for personality and provided the following functionality. 

a) Extension to the Eclipse template
support to allow control statements (i.e. "if", "else",
"for", etc.). This mixed JET with variable substitution.

b) Building of Wizards using XML defined
in the Plugin.xml file. 

c) Extensions to the snippets support.
This support allowed using the extension to the templates and showing a
Dialog based on XML in the Plugin.xml file.



The personality support will be replaced
with the following capabilities. 

"Generic AJAX Runtime" support
- Since most AJAX libraries are just a bunch of _javascript_ files, we are
going to provide GUIs that will allow a developer just point to a runtime
and then will be able to use it in ATF. The Generic Runtime support will
allow a Ajax Runtime to be defined to ATF and added to a project. No "Create
Application" application and snippets will be provided. 

Extension point org.eclipse.atf.core.runtime
is used to define a new AJAX Toolkit with bindings to a custom installer,
a validator, etc. Using this extension point will cause ATF to show the
Toolkit in the list of supported AJAX Toolkits and allow the end-user to
configure the location of a copy of this Toolkit.

Extension point org.eclipse.atf.core.runtimeInstance
is used to provide an embedded copy of a Toolkit. For example, a vendor
might want to ship its tool already with a copy of Toolkit X. The supported
way of doing this is to embed Toolkit X in a plugin and use this extension
point to declare its existence.


The ATF team is removing the personality
support for the following reasons. 

1. This functionality has nothing to
do with Ajax. If this functionality is useful, then it should be submitted
as a proposal to the base eclipse. ATF will focus on providing better support
for the languages involved in AJAX (JS, HTML, CSS, etc) and on tools around
the Browsers.

2. This code is becoming hard to maintain.
Instead of extending the functionality of ATF and fixing bugs, the team
is spending time maintaining this code. Changes to the base ATF  infrastructure
ripples thru this code and causes it to have to be changed for each release.


4. We want to move to be more AJAX runtime
neutral. By building personalities we are picking which vendors work in
ATF. This doesn't fit with the sprit of the eclipse charter which is to
be vendor neutral. The support that we do provide should be treated as
reference implementations and should in no way represent a full support
for a particular AJAX runtime. 

3. Long term the Open Ajax Alliance
is defining a standard for AJAX runtime vendors to implement that will
allow the runtime to be plug into an IDE. When this standard is complete,
ATF will look at implementing support for the standard. 


For existing consumers of ATF this means
that "Create Application wizards" and snippets for AJAX runtimes
will not longer be provided. 

  
Robert Goodman
ATF Developer
goodmanr@xxxxxxxxxx