[Geotools-gt2-users] gt2WMS moving to GeoServer project

[Chris H. <ch...@op...>]

Apologies for the large cross-post, please direct replies to 
geo...@li....

The gt2wms server is moving to the GeoServer project.  We've been wanting 
to move the wms server out of GeoTools for awhile, as it doesn't really 
fit with the rest of the modular nature.  Over at GeoServer we were 
planning on integrating the gt2wms anyways, so it seems to make sense to 
have the code actually live on in the same cvs.  This way our developers 
can benefit from one another's approaches, and hopefully combine common 
code.  Both are OGC web services on top of Geotools, so there should be a 
few places of overlap.  I'm planning on spending the rest of this week on 
integration, and initial attempts are promising.  I've successfully got 
them running in the same war, and can recieve a getCapabilities document 
for both.  

There are a few questions that I have, for all interested in the future of 
gt2wms, and its integration into geoserver.

1. How much integration do we want?  I think common configuration would be 
nice to have, so that both services could use the same configuration 
files.  GetCapabilities responses and Exception handling also seem like 
they have some overlap, so we might try to combine those classes.  We can 
talk more specifics on the geoserver devel list.

2. Maven on GeoServer?  The GeoServer project currently uses ant, which is 
nice and fast, and currently easier to get working (though maven 1.0 may 
prove that wrong).  Getting GeoServer on Maven would allow us to more 
quickly pick up geotools changes - right now I hand roll the geotools jar 
and put it on cvs, which is obviously less than ideal.  My plan is to 
start tagging geotools with geoserver tags of what is needed, but using 
maven would make that less necessary, as it would just download the proper 
jars.  I'm a bit inclined to stay with ant, but if someone (James?) is 
willing to set it up and no one's against the change I'll go along.

3. Package names for the gt2wms.  Do we want to keep the geotools package 
names, since that's where the code comes from?  Or do we want to make a 
org.vfny.geoserver.wms package?  Or if we're going for a lot of 
integration we could make org.vfny.geoserver.requests.wms and 
org.vfny.geoserver.responses.wms, and put all the common config code in 
org.vfny.geoserver.config.  And we can obviously start with one and move 
things around if and when we actually acheive integration.  

4. Distribution and Marketing.  These questions are not pressing, but how 
do we want to present the wms?  Should we make it available as a 
stand-alone wms?  Keep the downloadable war format?  Integrate it 
completely into GeoServer?  Create seperate installation instructions?  
Many of these questions depend on how much we integrate, but even if we do 
integrate a lot we can still have them live as slightly different projects 
in user's minds, just ones that inter-operate quite well.

Ok, I'm sure there will be more questions about this, but we can hold off 
for discussion on geoserver-devel.




	thanks,


	     Chris