Shibboleth Developers

[Chad La Joie <>]

Okay, some more functionality and a repurposing of a directory.

First, the new stuff.

New Directories
  bin - contains scripts and what not needed by the extension, this is
copied to the IDP_HOME's or SP_HOME's bin directory

  src-conf - contains configuration files for the extension that need to
be located on the classpath, these will be placed in the resulting jar
for the extension

New Functionality
 - The build now copies the bin/*, etc/*, lib/*, and extension jar to
the appropriate filesystem location during a filesystem install invocation

- The extension build file will expand the $IDP_HOME$ or $SP_HOME$
(depending on which you're building obviously) within any file in the
etc or src-conf directory.

- A new extension build property, ext.install.etc.  If set to 'true' it
will copy everything in the 'etc' directory to IDP_HOME/etc or
SP_HOME/etc, overwriting what is currently there.  Default setting is
'false'.

The repurposed directory (NOTE THIS)
  etc - this directory is now copied to the IDP_HOME's or SP_HOME's etc
directory and should contain configuration files for the extension, the
directory src-conf takes the place of the old purpose of the etc directory.

Chad La Joie wrote:
> There has been discussion off list about how to proceed with custom
> extensions (name mappers, protocol handlers, etc) to Shibboleth, those
> things that currently go in to the "custom" directory in the Shib IdP/SP
> code base.  Here is my proposition for a more formal and flexible way to
> deal with these custom extension.
> 
> Each custom extension (or groups of extensions) would create a directory
> within the "custom" directory.  These extension directories would have
> the following directory structure
> 
>   <extension_directory>
>      etc/
>      lib/
>      src/
>      test/
>      build.properties
> 
> The "src" directory would contains your java sources for the extensions.
>  The "test" directory would contain any unit tests for them.  The "etc"
> directory would contain any number of directories that would simply be
> copied in to the resulting extension jar, you would put any non-source
> files that you wanted available on the class path in here (config files,
> XML schemas, etc).  The "lib" directory would contain any 3rd party
> libraries you need for your stuff.  Additional directories can be
> included (documentation, config files that go somewhere else, etc) and
> they'll just be ignored.  The build.properties file would contain a
> single property; the name of the resulting jar.
> 
> When the IdP or SP was built it would compile each extension in turn
> (ensuring all the Shib and 3rd party extension classes/libs are on the
> classpath) and place the resulting extension jar, and all 3rd party jars
> (those in extension_directory/lib) into a lib directory in the "custom"
> directory.  Then, when the WARs were built for the IdP and SP, these jar
> would be scooped up and put in the appropriate place.  A by product of
> this approach is a greatly simplified means of including custom
> extension; compiling them in some fashion and just placing the resulting
> jar(s) in the custom/lib directory.
> 
> Two issues with this approach.  First, if different extensions use
> different versions of the same 3rd party jar you'll get class conflicts.
>  This would be true whether the Shib build did any of this special stuff
> or not.  Second, extension authors are locked in to this source-tree
> structure.  For most extensions this is probably just fine, for more
> complicated extensions this may not be good.  I had discussed with a
> couple people some idea for making this more flexible but ultimately we
> decided that the additional complexity for everything BUT the extension
> (and probably even for the extension) just wasn't worth it.  So, for
> these special extensions, they can create their own build process and
> just place their jar(s) in the custom/lib directory.
> 
> Thoughts and comments?

-- 
Chad La Joie             315Q St. Mary's Hall
Project Sentinel         202.687.0124