assimilator-users — general email list for all users of Assimilator

[Assimilator-users] Announcing release 1.1

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

Assimilator 1.1 has been released. There has been work going on since 
the 1.0 release but it's been tough for developers to to get much done 
with fulltime work, families and live away from computers. This release 
contains some additional capabilities, cleanup and some bug fixes. Here 
is the list:

    * corrected cybenode.sh script to properly accept parameter
      designating codebase location
    * JMX interface added to Monitor, Cybernode and Webster core services
    * drag and drop of oar files onto console service graph to deploy
      services added
    * corrected oar deployment code to handle operational strings with
      Include tags allowing deployment of dependent operational strings.
    * removed old viewer and opmon utility code, documentation and build
      file references.
    * changed helloworld example files and documentation to consistently
      use steps 1-6.
    * wrote new webster using MINA 1.1.4 (JDK 5 version) and integrated it
    * moved jini ServiceStarter class to assimilator and modified it to
      add loggers from top level config file (we had a really hard time
      get jini loggers to turn on properly before and this should fix
      it), quite a bit or exception refactoring and other general
      refactoring
    * moved all the script and config files to use the new service
      starter and new webster

-kevin.

[Assimilator-users] oar deployment fixes

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

Just checked in code fixing the deployment of oar files containing 
multiple operational strings and operational strings containing Include 
tags. This fixes dropping the raytrace example oar file into the 
deployment directory and dropping the file onto the console window. So 
far this is the only example tested using multiple operational strings 
with Includes. It should work for all oar files containing multiple 
operational strings.

-kevin.

[Assimilator-users] wiki pages

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

Just a quick note to users...

I realized that the project wiki pages haven't been mentioned on this 
list before. They are located at http://assimilator.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Of interest may be the release notes being compiled describing the 
additions already in the codebase for upcoming releases.
http://assimilator.wiki.sourceforge.net/Release+Notes

-kevin.

[Assimilator-users] new project web site

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

I just posted a simple project website at 
http://assimilator.sourceforge.net/
This should make it easier for people passing by to get some general 
information about Assimilator.

I'm always interested in feedback...

-kevin.

[Assimilator-users] Announcing Assimilator Release 1.0

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

The Assimilator development team is proud to announce the release of 
version 1.0. This is the culmination of a significant effort to release 
a stable version of a manageable distributed computing platform with 
tools to make it easy to use. The first file released for download is a 
platform independent installer with all platform binary software 
components and manual included.

The installer can be downloaded from
http://sourceforge.net/projectshowfiles.php?group_id=174753

Installation is started using
java -jar assimilator-installer-1.0.jar

General project information can be found on the project wiki at
http://assimilator.wiki.sourceforge.net/

A quick start guide to using Assimilator is included in the manual which 
is part of the download. It's found in
Assimilator/docs/manual/quickStart.html

We welcome your feedback!

There are many significant enhancements planned for future releases. 
Please let us know if you are interested in participating in future 
development.

-kevin.

[Assimilator-users] So whats happening with assimilator - An update

[Larry M. <lar...@gm...>]

Hi Everyone,

It has been a while since we updated you on what is happening with 
Assimilator.  This short email is intended to give you an idea of what 
we have done and what we plan to do in the next while.

*1) Participation*

First of all, I would like to thank those of you who have had great 
suggestions for features and those who have given usability feedback.  
We have made a significant number of changes to reflect what you have 
asked.  There is however, a lot more to do.  We would like to involve 
you the community as much as possible.

In a great many of these sort of Jini based container projects, it tends 
to be a on man tyranny where those who use it have very little say in 
what happens.  We have purposefully structured the project to have 
mutliple developers and we would encourage each of you to participate.  
At the moment there are 7 committers 3 of whom does the lion's share of 
work.

Since this is a meritocracy, to become a committer requires that those 
wanting that role develop something for assimilator that we need.  
Depending on the quality and value of the submitted code the current 
committers vote to add that person.

The last thing we want is this to become another one of those Jini 
container projects where one guy does it all.

Anyway, nuff said on that subject.

*2) What's New*

Over the summer, we have added a number of things

a) build files and project structure: *Status: *almost done

There was a real mess there with file system and environment 
dependencies everywhere so we have set it up so that you can do a fresh 
checkout and not have to change a single environment variable and it 
will just work/build.

We also included a experimental module so that we could try advanced 
concepts and make them available to those collaborating.

b) Comprehensive examples : *Status: *done

The old hello world example was ok but basically incomprehensible to the 
beginning user.  We broke it out to be a staged laerning and added a 
number of idiomatic programming pattern examples to help people 
understand what and how assimilator works.

Please take a look and suggest other examples you would like to see.  If 
you can make an example we will be sure to include it.

c) New service browser: *Status: *functional - some additional features 
planned

The utilities section of Assimilator has 4 different viewing tools.  
These are a mess and were historic in their importance and relevance.  
However, they have a number of bugs and problems/limitation associated 
with them.  The new service browser is intended to replace them all.  
Most of the functionality (remaining feature porting work still 
remains).  Once we have extracted all the capabilities that make sense 
out of the older utilities we will retire then and tidy up (remove) the 
older poorer code.

The new service browser is a massive improvement over the older viewer 
so please give it a test drive.

d) Installer: *Status: *almost done

We added a cross platform installer.  This allows the user to add 
sections that they want and avoids the whole svn type of all or 
nothing.  The installer is basic at the moment (although it was a 
significant effort to setup) and we plan on enhancing it as we need over 
the next year.

e) New webster service : *Status: *almost done

The old webster was a good improvement to the jini class server in that 
it supported multiple file roots and was multithreaded but is did not 
fit in with the rest of the infrastructure for lifecycle and ease of 
use.  I made some initial improvement some time ago to add jini 
configuration properties to it but the most recent work was to give it a 
jini interface allowing it to be reconfigured on the fly and thus add 
new file roots.

This new webster will vastly change how http clas loading is dynamically 
managed.

f) New archive format for Assimilator and a directory based deployer : 
*Status: *almost done

This is a relatively new development and I am trying to finish it by end 
of next week. 

The big problem in the pass is the number of artifacts you had to deal 
with to setup a opstring deployment.  There are the opstrings, policy 
files, service jars (at least 3 per service), the support libs like 
jini, spring, hibernate, ad nauseum.

We reintroduced the concept (and it is an old one never implemented) of 
an OAR (operational string archive).  This is similar to a war or ear in 
that it includes all of the above elements in one zip archive with a 
".oar" suffix.

In order to make this meaning full we added a directory based oar 
installer/deployer that acts with the same semantics as Tomcat.  If you 
add an oar file to the directory it is unzipped and deployed.  If you 
remove the oar file then it is undeployed.

We also added a utiltiy to create oar files and there is an oar deployer 
admin to discover what is happening.

*3) Short Term plans for development*

Over the next few months we will be working in the following topics.

/a) a new microkernel architecture for Assimilator/

Lets face it, the underlying code base for Assimilator is a mess and 
this is primarily historic.  The little project that grew without 
discipline.  When we forked the codebase from the original project the 
problem was evident.

The biggest surprise is that it worked.  :)

We can't step forward and let the state of the codebase remain because 
already we are seeing very difficult to find bugs (nothing major but 
that is only a matter of time).

Thus the question is how to proceed.  At the moment, we have some work 
in the experimental module.  In the past we tried a spring based 
container and this has been added to the experimental codebase.  Also we 
started a declarative OSGi container experiment.  The reason for two 
approaches is to determin how to take the best of these two world and go 
forward.

This will be an interesting and challenging project and we would like 
participants

/b) Class loading abstractions/

class loader source lockin (not the right term but it describes the 
problem) is a huge problem.  For example, if you have a webster serving 
jars and it crashes you are dead even though these jars are available 
elsewhere due to the lockin to that specific class loading mechanism.

/c) Assimilator communication and discovery over the internet/WAN/

Jini (and assimialtor as well) works well on an open LAN but it is a 
disaster on an internet with NATS, multicast unfriendly routers and 
firewalls.  This project will attempt to get the current best state of 
the art in P2P and make it a core technology to the assimilator.

We are researching this at the moment.


Regards
Larry

Re: [Assimilator-users] project reorganization

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

Long overdue update.

The restructure is complete with testing of most all the core and 
example scripts done.

Also there is a new HTML manual added to update documentation and 
consolidate it all in Assimilator/docs/manual. All the old docs were 
either incorporated or just deleted if they were no longer relevant. 
It'll be easier to maintain the docs now instead of them being scattered 
all over different directories. Maybe someday we can have a Wiki for the 
project.

Next up is creating an admin console for viewing and working with 
services. This is to replace the opmon and viewer utilities which are 
outdated. Also there will be an installer for users who are 
non-developers and just want to deploy and manage services. Then we can 
get an official release out on the download page.

-kevin.

Kevin Hartig wrote:
> Starting today the project files and directories will be reorganized. 
> The modifications will reduce the complexity of all the sub-levels and 
> simplify the builds. General cleanup will also take place removing 
> undesired and no longer used artifacts.  
>  
> During this refactoring, build scripts and other things will be 
> temporarily broken. I will post a follow-up to this thread to indicate 
> when the project has been successfully reorganized. 
>  
> Thanks for your patience. 
>  
> -kevin.
>
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[Assimilator-users] project reorganization

[Kevin H. <kev...@gm...>]

Starting today the project files and directories will be reorganized. 
The modifications will reduce the complexity of all the sub-levels and 
simplify the builds. General cleanup will also take place removing 
undesired and no longer used artifacts.  
 
During this refactoring, build scripts and other things will be 
temporarily broken. I will post a follow-up to this thread to indicate 
when the project has been successfully reorganized. 
 
Thanks for your patience. 
 
-kevin.