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From: "Tim Anderson" <tma@netspace.net.au>
To: <repository@apache.org>
Subject: RE: click through license support?
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:24:39 +1100
Message-ID: <AHEMLCHGJOKOCPPFEOIHKEEOHKAA.tma@netspace.net.au>
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In-Reply-To: <3FBC04B6.3040503@chalko.com>
Importance: Normal

I was thinking of something like the following:

1. all artifacts in the repository are real or virtual.
2. real artifacts are hosted in the repository
3. virtual artifacts are not hosted, but refer to
    the real artifact via:
    4. http redirection
    5. http redirection requiring processing

This group can certainly make statements about [1]-[4],
as they are language and platform neutral.
However, for the java space, [5] is perhaps the most useful.
I would like it to be part of the scope for this group,
to enable compatibility between tools.

E.g, given the URI:
  http://repo.apache.org/sun/jndi/jars/jndi-1.2.1.jar 
a tool would automagically go to the Sun website, prompt the user 
to accept the license, download the jndi-1_2_1.zip distribtion and
extract the jar.

In terms of implementation, this could be done via redirection 
to a descriptor containing instructions for obtaining the 
real artifact. This descriptor might consist of:
. the URL of the real artifact
. licensing requirements
. processing requirements to:
  . extract the artifact          
    E.g, if the artifact is part of a larger distribution,
    how to extract it from that distribution.
  . massage the artifact
    E.g, renaming the artifact, or changing
    MANIFEST.MF Class-Path entries to use repository naming 
    conventions.

The meta data required to support this are language and platform
specific. However, I think it should be easier to form a concensus
on the meta-data requirements and format to support this than
for other meta-data proposals which are more to do with
artifact description than artifact resolution.

-Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Chalko [mailto:nick@chalko.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2003 11:03 AM
> To: repository@apache.org
> Subject: Re: click through license support?
> 
> 
> Tim Anderson wrote:
> 
> >This group could make recommendations as to how
> >virtual artifacts could be supported.
> >
> >  
> >
> 
> Agree that we should deal with license issue's and virutal artifacts 
> when we take on metadata.