[ecf-dev] file-based discovery

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

Part of the Remote Service Admin specification is what is called the 
'Endpoint Description Extender Format'.    This is essentially an xml 
file format that allows Endpoint Descriptions (meta-data about a remote 
service endpoint) to be read from an xml file.  See [1] section 122.8.

This endpoint description extender format essentially replaces (and 
obsoletes) the ECF file-based discovery [2].   This old format came from 
the work on RFC 119 in the OSGi enterprise experts group, and the 
implementation that ECF has been using was originally contributed by 
some great folks at Siemens...along with some integration work by Markus 
and myself.

In moving over to use/support RSA, I would like to *remove* the current 
file-based discovery mechanism from ECF 3.5...in favor of the standard 
Endpoint Description Extender Format (which is supported by the new ECF 
RSA implementation code).  This will mean that existing ECF remote 
service clients that use the old file-based discovery would need to move 
to using the new EDEF format, and that the old version of those ECF 
implementation plugins will not work with ECF 3.5 remote services (which 
is now based upon RSA [3]).

I think it will be better to eliminate the support for the old format in 
favor of the OSGi RSA standard format, rather than keeping both 
active/available.  Although this will imply some work by everyone 
involved (i.e. me/us/ECF contributors as well as consumers), it doesn't 
seem feasible to me to continue supporting the old (non-standardized) 
format when a standard exists and is now fully supported by ECF.  Also, 
I don't think it's going to be possible to continue for me or other ECF 
committers to support the code that reads/manipulates the old format.

So, first...any comments about this decision (i.e. to remove support for 
the old format from ECF remote services...in favor of the EDEF that's in 
the RSA implementation)?

Second...at a certain point it will make sense to remove this project 
from the ECF hudson build:

https://build.ecf-project.org/hudson/job/C-HEAD-discovery.local.feature/

because this feature (discovery local) is no longer necessary...and in 
fact some of the dependencies that it has (on the old ECF remote 
services implementation) are now gone...meaning that this code won't 
continue to compile against master (that's why it's failing now).  So in 
essence what I would like to do is remove this project from the Hudson 
build.

Thanks,

Scott

[1] http://www.osgi.org/download/r4v42/r4.enterprise.pdf
[2] http://wiki.eclipse.org/File-based_Discovery
[3] ECF RSA support/plan bug:  
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=324215