Hi Antonio,
here are my two cents:
The profile idea was good. And I still support it. Even if the reason
for it simply was to lower the barriers for web-container centered
products to earn a Java EE certification.
It would be nice to have more specialized profiles around but I don't
believe a new "Servlet/Minimal profil" would be of any help with your
problem.
With all the core modules being present in the server classpath you
end up having trouble replacing them. It ever has been like this.
I have similar experiences while switching from one vendor to the
other in general. Even upgrading containers for a single product is a
pain most of the time.
Having a minimal/lightweight whatever-you-call-it profile in place
solves this but you would end up with your own DIY app-server. That's
not the way I would like to see Java EE moving. This approach could
even be harder in terms of migration in the future. And it sets a
comparably high barrier for beginners which need to know which
technologies to pick.
Instead what I would love to see is, that we move forward with some
thoughts regarding modularization and version number ranges for
dependent technologies.
All the modularization work that is done for Java 8 might be a good
way to facilitate this with later EE versions.
To me it doesn't seem to be a good fit investing into this before Java
8 (and so Java EE 8) and I also don't support having a new minimal
profile.
-M
On 29 June 2012 23:34, Antonio Goncalves <antonio.goncalves_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Four years ago, when we were building Java EE 6, we had this idea of a
> minimal profile that Roberto blogged about
> (http://weblogs.java.net/blog/robc/archive/2008/02/profiles_in_the.html).
> The idea was to standardise "Tomcat-like" application servers with a minimal
> profile containing Servlets and JSPs. So we would have had this "minimal"
> profile, the web profile and the full one. We mostly voted no on this
> minimal profile, and I was one of them.
>
> I've spent the week migrating a JSF 1.2 application running on Tomcat to
> JBoss 6 EAP (which comes with JSF 2.0). Now I'm trying to run an application
> with JAX-RS 2.0 running on GlassFish 3.x (which comes with JAX-RS 1.1). On
> both cases, it's hell. This would be easier if I could have used a JBoss 6
> EAP Minimal Profile (or a GlassFish 3.x Minimal Profile) and bundle my own
> external jars like I do with Tomcat. If we want applications to migrate to
> Java EE application servers, one ease of use would be to have just a servlet
> container. And it will give a nice migration plan to application : e.g.
> "migrate from Tomcat to JBoss Minimal profile, and then when you are used to
> your new application server, move to a Web Profile and start adding other
> Java EE modules".
>
> I think having a new "Minimal Profile" (a better name would be a "Servlet
> Profile" with just Servlets, EL and JSP) would increase modularity in
> application servers and help applications to migrate to Java EE.
>
> What would you think of introducing a new profile in Java EE 7 ?
>
> Antonio