Preserve Maven repository structure of dependencies when generating IPF distribution ZIPs

[unixoid]

Currently, when a distrubution ZIP of the IPF is created, all JARs are placed into two flat sub-folders --- "dist" for IPF JARs and "lib" for dependencies' ones. Would it be not better to "mirror" the Maven2 repository structure instead? In particular, this would give the possibility to create an off-line Maven2 build environment by simply copying the provided structure into ~/.m2/repository.

Your opinions are highly appreciated.

[krasserm]

Why do you want to support offline Maven2 builds? Was this a request from a client/user? When adding IPF dependencies to the classpath, you'll anyway flat it again (i.e. outside an OSGi environment).

[unixoid]

For example, I want to set up a development environments on a notebook that I plan to take to the Connectathon (to Hawaii, to the moon, into a prison, etc.) and that will be not connected to the Internet. A combination of two distribution ZIP files --- one with IPF sources and one with dependency JARs --- will not solve my problem: in particular, because Maven2 will be unable to access the JARs and will not have neccessary plugins.

Ok, being connected to the Internet today, I installed JDK, Maven, unzipped IPF sources and ran mvn install --- these steps have created the environment I need. But then I had to set up a second notebook in the same way. What would be the best approach for it?

And a more generic question: what is the purpose of the "full" IPF distribution ZIP (with all dependencies in the folder "lib")?

[krasserm]

I know what Maven offline builds are good for, but my question was: can't we require (from users) to do the first build with an existing internet connection? What speaks against doing some online preparation work before traveling? I wonder if making changes to the build process for supporting offline use cases is worth the effort. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to argue against; was just curious. I don't have any special reason to stay with the current zip content structure.

Regarding your question to setup a second laptop: why don't you simply copy the existing Maven cache (and the built IPF project) to it?

[unixoid]

Online preparation before traveling is not a problem, of course. Manual copying of the Maven cache between laptops would work as well. But these are IMHO exactly the steps which could be efficienly simplified. I would like to repeat my questions from yesterday here: What is the purpose of the "full" IPF distribution ZIP (with all dependencies in the folder "lib")? Just to support non-Maven2 users?

[krasserm]

Online preparation before traveling is not a problem, of course. Manual copying of the Maven cache between laptops would work as well. But these are IMHO exactly the steps which could be efficienly simplified.

Agreed. Was just wondering if its worth the effort if this only needs to be done once and it anyway won't work as soon as you have snapshot dependencies - but I'm fine with everything you want to do in this direction :)

What is the purpose of the "full" IPF distribution ZIP (with all dependencies in the folder "lib")? Just to support non-Maven2 users?

Yes, this was a customer request.

[unixoid]

Ok, thanks for your support :)
I don't know whether other users would appreciate this feature and how big effort would it require to implement --- therefore I put this "discussion issue" here (probably I had to post it to ipf-dev or even to ipf-users instead :-/ ).