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Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 10:19:10 -0700
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Subject: [OT] Donation of Adobe's "File Vault" and packaging tools
From: Tobias Bocanegra <tripod@apache.org>
To: "dev@jackrabbit.apache.org" <dev@jackrabbit.apache.org>
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Hello,

as some of you might know, we at Adobe (and at Day Software before)
developed quite some tooling around exporting, importing and syncing
content from and to a JCR repository. The "checked-out" structure on
the local filesystem also offers SVN-like operations, like update,
checkin, status, etc., against the JCR repository. We called this
system the "File Vault (vlt)". It uses the built-in JCR remoting of
Jackrabbit to read and write the content.

We also used the same serialization format to implement our "Content
Packages" which basically are a zip of such an exported structure, w/o
all the meta information needed for syncing. This packaging system
also comes with a HTTP service and UI that allows to actually manage
those packages (create, update, install, uninstall, upload, etc).

Additionally we also developed some maven plugins that allow building
such content packages, controlling vlt (the command line tool) and
deploying content packages into a running repository.

Our R&D thinks that the Jackrabbit project would benefit from such
tooling since nothing comparable is established today. We are now at a
stage where we cleared all hurdles with Adobe Legal, and streamlined
the codebase so that we are ready to contribute. All that's left to do
from our side is to refactor the java package space and replace the
copyrights.

Once contributed, we will continue developing the tools, as we heavily
use them in-house and also train our customers and partners on this
technology. IMO, there is little risk, that the code gets orphaned.

If the general consensus is that such a contribution is desired, I
will prepare the final patch and offer it for contribution.

The rough schedule is:

May: prepare patch and offer contribution of vlt, packaging, maven plugins
June: prepare patch and offer contribution of package manager and
related maven plugins

Along the same notes we also look into simplifying "vlt" as it is
sometimes a bit tricky to use :-) This development will start after
the contribution and we hope to have something usable by end of this
year.

Thank you.
Regards, Toby