Re: [nebula-dev] On the state and future of Nebula - Part 2

[Tom Schindl <listom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Only 2 responses within one week not sure what that means. This is
really an important decision for the future of Nebula so I'm looking
forward to feedback from all active committers.

Tom

Tom Schindl schrieb:
> Hi Nebula-Community,
> 
> This is the next part in my series on "The state and future for Nebula".
> The last mail was "It's all about the mission" and we came up with a new
> mission statement but only changing our mission is not enough because
> the changing the mission implies the project structure also changes.
> 
> So this mail can be summerized with "It's all about project structure
> and release".
> 
> There are 3 different possibilities to address the problem that we can't
> release stuff to the public make our mission statement reality:
> 
> * Every widget has is its own eclipse project (L1)
> 
>   Nebula-Project
>     + PShelf-Project (Stable - release 1.0)
>     + Gallery-Project (Stable - release 1.1)
>     + ...
>     + MyComponent-Project (stable release 2.0)
>     + MyComponent2-Project (Incubation - no release)
> 
> * We split nebula in 2 Projects (L2)
> 
>   Nebula-Project (Stable - release 1.0)
>     + PShelf
>     + Gallery
>     + MyComponent
>     + ...
>     + Nebula-Incubator-Project
>       + MyComponent2
> 
> 
> Both layouts have features and draw backs and we need to take a look at
> them in more detail:
> 
> L1:
>   - Administrative-Overhead for Widget-Creator is high
>   - Administrative-Overhead for Eclipse-Foundation and Webmasters
>   - High burden to bring in new widgets
>   + Release flexibility for the widget owner
> 
> L2:
>   + No Administrative-Overhead for Widget-Creator
>   + No Administrative-Overhead for Eclipse-Foundation and Webmasters
>   - No individual releases by the widget owner
> 
> Both layouts don't play well with our mission because if we want Eclipse
> Projects move their reuseable code to Nebula (like e.g. XViewer) they
> might have the need of individual releases and might decide to keep the
> code private to their project (On EclipseCon I talked with people from
> NatTable and this was something they would have a problem with).
> 
> So in the last days I thought about those things and came up with the
> following project structure:
> 
> Nebula-Project
>   + PShelf-Project (Stable - release 1.0)
>   + Gallery-Project (Stable - release 1.1)
>   + ...
>   + MyComponent-Project (Stable release 2.0)
>   + Nebula-Incubator-Project
>       + MyComponent2
> 
> Additionally I'd like to define a Nebula-Release-Train just like we have
> an Eclipse Release Train on the top-level project structure where we
> provide a concerted release of all Nebula-Widgets, an Update-Site, ... .
> 
> We need to ask our PMC of course whether the above layout is supported
> by the Eclipse-Project rules or not but to me looks like it is.
> 
> Looking at the +/- for this layout we have:
>   / Medium Administrative-Overhead for Widget-Creator
>   / Medium Administrative-Overhead for Eclipse-Foundation
>   + Low burden to bring in new widget ideas and follow parallel ip
>   + Release flexibility for the widget owner
>   + Concerted release of widgets through the Nebula-Release-Train
>     involving adversiment, ... .
> 
> And there's one more nice side-effect. Up-grading from Incubator gives
> the community a chance to review the project, source code, ... and give
> feedback through the default channels because up-grading involves a
> project proposal (To make this as painless as possible we should provide
> a template proposal widget-owners can use and simply drop in their
> widget-description, ...).
> 
> So now it's once more your turn Nebula-Developers and widget owners
> (soon you can add the title project lead to your mail signature :-).
> 
> What do you think? I leave this topic once more open for the next weeks
> and hope that we come to a decision until then.
> 
> Thanks for reading through this once more long mail and your feedback.
> 
> Tom
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