Echo Web Framework

Hi,
I'am sorry that the Email server rejects your email address, but still thanks for starting the topic.
So the problem with echopoint in my eyes is that you get all or nothing and have a lot of dependencies. In our projects we are not always allowed to add any libraries we want. Thus we can not use echopoint at all (e.g. google depending libraries).

My proposal therefore is to split echopoint in modules related to their dependencies. Each module alone is much easier to maintain. This is similar to Tods echo3 module management (core, extras, file-transfer). It allows people to pick exactly the module they need and makes the dependencies transparent. It makes it also also easier to add new projects to echopoint. Overall modules their should be an echopoint root project able to create an "überjar" containing all projects and their dependencies.

Example:

\ echopoint
  |- etc (contains the echopoint version and stuff that is valid to all submodules)
  |- build (contains reusable ant scripts for any module sharing a certain structure) 
  \- basic (depending on echo3 core, like HTMLLabel or the Progressbar)
      \- src
         \- main
         |- resources
          \- java
         |- test
      |- libs (the third party dependencies of this submodule)
      |- etc (contains sub module specific properties - may overwrite parent modules properties)
  build.xml (the build file for basic module uses the build scripts)
  |- charts (depending on google apis, like BarChart, LineChart, Meter)
  |- jquery (depending on jquery, like Clock, Flexigrid, DatePicker)
build.xml

Each Module has its own dependencies and will become an artefact once built (e.g. a JAR file). Each module can be built independent and has a version defined by the root (echopoint).

Using a proper build system (ant, maven etc) makes handling the modules a piece of cake and is independent of any IDE. I suggest ANT, since its easy to maintain and very flexible. We developed the proposed kind of ant script based modularisation. So it can be used to handle echopoint as well.

Furthermore i suggest to depend on a released version of echo3 and not to hack and patch it inside echopoint. Out of my experience its not necessary since you can always copy, rename and modifiy core components.

So far what do you think?

Regards,
Oliver