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Subject: Disagreements regarding inclusion of Tomcat/Jetty Picker in M4 QA
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From: sissonj@insession.com
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 <OF6A978D0A.9249115A-ONCA257044.0042A5C6-CA257044.004C8BE6@tsainc.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:56:05 +1100
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On the Geronimo IRC channel there was talk about the Tomcat/Jetty Picker 
not going in M4 because it is now involving more code changes than what 
people thought they had agreed to.  This was a surprise to me and after 
discussion it was proposed that I call for a vote.

Before I do, I thought a little background might be helpful..

Back in the mail thread "Preparation for M4 -- jetty vs tomcat or jetty 
and tomcat (two builds)" on 5th of July  it was agreed that there would be 
a Tomcat and a Jetty build of Geronimo. 

In the mail thread "Wait or not? Respond quick. (M4 -- 24 hour notice of 
branch)" on 9th of July, it appears nobody asked to hold off creating the 
branch to do the work for the Tomcat / Jetty builds.  Maybe it was just 
assumed it was going to be simple changes in the branch, or it was 
forgotten.

In the mail thread "M4 Status", started by Aaron on 18th July, he said "I 
believe Jeff is working on separate plans for Tomcat and Jetty builds, so 
we can produce two separate distributions as people seemed to prefer." . 
Alan responded  "I think that the notion that adding new features into a 
QA branch is a bad idea stands, regardless of how simple the changes are 
and how simple it is to merge them.  It's simply bad form".  Alan then 
said "I'm not opposed to the what and why.  I am opposed to the how." 
David Jencks also agreed with Alan in the mail thread.

So it seems that people are unhappy with the "how" as Alan said.

Since it was already agreed that we are to have separate Tomcat and Jetty 
builds in M4, that decision should not be questioned and as a reminder 
Jeff's changes have the following benefits:

* Less user problems - the previous method of having to edit many files is 
prone to failure, it caught me out many times, and I have seen others get 
caught out!
* We don't have to document the M4 way of configuring the web containers 
and the M5 way of configuring.  This makes the instructions more 
complicated and makes it harder for other forms of documentation to stay 
relevant (e.g. articles and Aaron's book). 
* Documentation does not have to be changed when we reach M5. 
* We are seen to be trying to minimise changes that impact configuration 
between releases. 

Looking back, it appears we branched too early.

I propose that we vote on the "how" with the following options:

    a)  Merge Jeff's Tomcat/Jetty switch changes into the M4 QA branch

    b)  Make a new Geronimo M4 QA and OpenEJB M4 QA branches from HEAD 
when it is stable.

John

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