Noel J. Bergman wrote:
Ross Gardler wrote:
...
As I understood your recent comments, you (Forrest) are actively working to
make the workflow simpler, such than anyone should be able to download a
binary, grab our site from SVN, build and publish. Correct?
Yes that is correct. As an example, see the simple instructions for
building and deploying the Forrest site (very small file):
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/forrest/trunk/etc/publishing_our_site.txt
We are also removing the need to have Forrest installed locally. In this
instance just get Incubator SVN, make edits, commit, log in to a webapp
and a click on a button to build the site for QA. OK, this is not a
great idea for major edits or structural changes but, for very simple
edits (spelling for example) this is great.
In other words you can get your community much more involved by removing
the need to install/learn *any* software locally other than SVN and
their chosen editor. Edit, commit, login, click.
Forrest does not enforce the same workflow on everyone (Cocoon, for
example, use a CMS, thus removing the need to checkout SVN as well)
I find it strange that this thread claims the workflow is not supported,
we support *many* workflows, including the one outlined in the very
first mail of this thread.
Will it be timeley? I don't know we are all volunteers. It will take as
long as it takes.
Best guess?
The one line build and commit works now.
The webapp described above works now (not yet working on the Forrest
Zone, but I use it in a production).
Improve the local edit/build workflow? I intend to have a prototype
within a week, it is holidays after all. However, no promises, I am a
volunteer ;-)
What will this do? It will implement a new "forrest run" feature that
will allow you to save a file to the built site from within the browser,
as suggested by Geir in this thread.
Of course, the above build and deploy options will also be available
from within the browser as part of this prototype.
just run the ant build, optionally with a site target. How
hard would that be? That seems to be the level of ease-of-use that people
expect, and would welcome.
I don't think this is a problem, the "forrest" command is only a wrapper
for Ant. We need a specific version of ANT but I don't think there are
any remaining issues with using a version not supplied with Forrest
itself. I'd need to confirm that with Forrest devs though.
what if we were to put the correct
version of Forrest as a binary in our site build structure, along with a
build script? That would ensure that the correct version is being used, and
support better ease of use, no?
This is certainly possible. The problem is that Forrest is, as has been
observed, a large download - too large (not 60Mb as someone claimed in
this thread, more like around 20Mb, but still large).
I would actually recommend using a snapshot of SVN head instead. The
reason being that we (Forrest) could add the incubator site to our
integration tests on the Forrest zone. I like the idea of this because
the Incubator use is not "typical" of Forrest users (for example, you
use html sources).
Incubator wouldn't be using Forrest SVN head exactly, rather a "last
known working version" packaged as a binary. We would store this in the
Forrest SVN, and the incubator could include it in your checkout with an
svn:external. Thus you would be protected from the occasional breaks in
our codebase.
Downside? Periodic upgrades of this snapshot, which would be more
frequent than Forrest releases would result in a large svn update.
NOTE: this would require the agreement of the Forrest community as
someone would have to build this snapshot. I'm willing to volunteer to
do that, but nevertheless, I don't represent the whole community and
there may be objections. I will discuss on the Forrest list and report
back here if there is interest.
I also volunteer to ensure the incubator site was kept up to date with
changes in Forrest so that it will always build with the latest binary
snapshot. Of course, there is always the risk that i disappear. We know
the dangers of relying on a single person.
This could be avoided by sticking with a specific version of Forrest,
again we could provide such a snapshot.
Ross
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