Create a package manager for REST API extensions and transforms

[dmcassel]

Analogous to npm.

Motivation: make it easy to share REST API service extensions and transformations.

$ ml pm install tagger

• downloads the tagger extension, puts it into the rest/ext directory of the current Roxy project.
• downloads any dependent libraries, sets up the path under your src directory. Convention: src/lib/{extension-name}/{libraries}. enforced?
• downloading happens by "git clone" to a tmp directory, then files are moved to the appropriate locations.
• stores information about what was installed. where?

$ ml pm remove tagger

• lists files to be removed from the current Roxy project, prompts to confirm

$ ml pm publish tagger.xml

• sends tagger.xml to package registry (a public-facing web site hosted by MarkLogic registry.marklogic.com).

<package>
  <extension>
    <name>tagger</name>
    <location>https://github.com/dmcassel/tagger</location>
    <description>Takes parameters "uri", "tag", and "path". Inserts a &amp;lt;tag&amp;gt; element with the value of the tag parameter at the specified path.<description>
    <works-with-ml>6</works-with-ml>
    <license url="http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT">MIT</license>
  </extension>
</package>

<package>
  <transform>
    <name>flatten-meta</name>
    <location>https://github.com/dmcassel/flatten-meta</location>
    <description>Converts elements of the form &amp;amp;lt;meta name="foo" value="bar"/&amp;gt; to &amp;lt;foo&amp;gt;bar&amp;lt;/foo&amp;gt;</description>
    <works-with-ml>6</works-with-ml>
    <works-with-ml>7</works-with-ml>
    <license url="http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT">MIT</license>
  </transform>
</package>

registry.marklogic.com would provide services to the "ml pm" command and allow for package browsing, like https://npmjs.org/.

This ticket lists first-cut functionality.

[dmcassel]

The advantage of doing this in conjunction with Roxy (instead of as a stand-alone project) is the simple path to deployment for extensions/transforms and any dependent libraries.

[dmcassel]

Packages should probably support a <depends-on> element. That way you could have multiple extensions/transforms that use the same dependent library.

[paxtonhare]

Look at how bower does this for JavaScript libs. Each library has a bower.json file at the root of its github repo.

Run bower with no params for all available commands.

[eedeebee]

Also see http://getcomposer.org for PHP - also uses json for config.
And Florent George's attempt for XML at cxan.org - suspect ther'es some integration with namespaces and paths there that might be interesting.

[dmcassel]

Talked to eedeebee earlier, who suggested that this could be used for more than extensions & transforms. As I'm picturing it, the registry would need to include XQuery lib modules anyway (for extensions/transforms that need supporting libraries). Not much of a leap to allow for lib modules that don't have extensions or transforms associated with them.

Paxton, maybe this is a way to handle the different approaches to unit testing we've discussed. We could have different packages for unit testing. Install the one you want (current, or the annotation-based approach that requires ML6) and test away. If modules would get installed under src/lib (or src/pm-modules, or whatever), the rewriter would need to know where to find the tester. Maybe that level of integration is a version 2+ feature.

[grtjn]

MLPM saw light in 2015, and covers the needs described here. It comes with it's own mechanism to deploy src, as well as extensions, but that can be integrated into Roxy without too much difficulty. However, that is covered in #357.

I think there is no need for another package manager..