Shibboleth Developers

[Chad La Joie <>]

Sorry, I said I would move this to the dev list a while ago and it just
fell off my list.

Taylor, if I can summarize, you said you saw the following benefits to
creating a TIM:
- Removal of most, if not all, of the information in the <application>
section of the TC config
- Expression of support versions of Shib and TC
- Distribution of the file via tim-get

I actually don't see these benefits.  Users can safely ignore the
information in the TC config file, our instructions are pretty clear
they just need to touch the top part.  In the event that they're using
an extension that would need them to instrument classes I believe having
the other classes there as a guide is also helpful.  In terms of
expressing support for particular versions of Shibboleth we only support
one version at a time.  So when that version comes out I update the docs
(or at least try to) and thats the end.  Distribution of the config file
is also a non-issue.  It comes with the Shib distribution or people can
pull it off the site from the page that provides directions on setting
up clustering.

Now, one thing I do find worrying about our use of TC to date is that
when 2.7.1, in theory just a bug release, came out we had to change our
directions for installing TC because a TIM that had worked no longer
did.  I'm willing to believe that this is because I mistakenly used a
SNAPSHOT version and not an official release of the vector TIM.  If
however that wasn't the case and such changes will be common we'll
probably need to move to something other than Terracotta because it
won't be supportable given our resources.

Additionally I'm having growing concerns as I watch the interaction
between Russ and you.  I am very grateful to Russ for putting this stuff
through it's paces in a way that I can not but I see him bring up a
number of a issues (garbage collection currently) and you are providing
answers (which is good, and I appreciate that too).  However, the
information you provide isn't something I can find in the TC
documentation.  I don't mind telling people to go read the docs, I do
that all the time, but if there are no docs for them to read than,
again, it's not a supportable product for us.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Shib-Users] Roll call - Terracotta usage?
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 10:11:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Taylor Gautier 
<>
Reply-To: 

To: 


It's not as much as I would like, but should give you a pretty good idea
how to get going:


http://www.terracotta.org/web/display/orgsite/Terracotta+Integration+Modules+Manual



Basically, TIMs are OSGi modules with a bit more meta-data in them.
 There's also a maven-archetype to get you going quickly that is listed
in the doc.  If you don't use Maven to build Shibboleth, then you will
find it a bit harder to manage and create TIMs because Maven manages a
lot of the dependencies and other tasks such as updating the meta-data
in the JAR manifest.


Compass would provide a good example of how to build a TIM using Ant
since it uses Ant, not Maven.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad La Joie" 
<>
To: 

Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2008 10:06:37 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [Shib-Users] Roll call - Terracotta usage?

Is there any documentation on creating these?

Taylor Gautier wrote:
> Thanks for the response Chad.   
> 
> 
> I think the largest benefit to using the TIM method is hiding or 
> abstracting all the uninteresting bits of config - from the end-users 
> perspective - into the TIM.  Only the shib devs need to manage that stuff, 
> so I think it's cleaner.  It also provides for a mechanism to track 
> dependencies, both as a dependency on versions of shibboleth, and on 
> Terracotta.  This may not be so important now, but may be more important 
> over time.  Finally, you can track versions of the implementation - I find 
> that in real deployments, rather than diffing configs, it is a lot easier 
> to simply state that "tim-shibboleth version 1.0.1 is out of date, you 
> should use 1.0.2". 
> 
> 
> As for the distribution using tim-get (and the resulting extra step) this 
> is simply one way to manage the distribution - if you would like to update 
> the shibboleth build process to produce a TIM, that is absolutely fine.  
> The Compass project is doing this currently:  
> http://www.compass-project.org/  The Compass project is simply a Java 
> library, and thus produces a single JAR file.  To modify this output JAR to 
> "be" a TIM was a simple matter of updating only slightly the Compass build 
> process.  TIMs are JARs with extra meta-data in them (and the config file) 
> so this is usually pretty easy.  There are two options here - one would be 
> if Shibboleth has a natural "jar" file - and the other would be to produce 
> a new build artifact that is the TIM. 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Chad La Joie" 
> <>
>  
> To: 
> 
>  
> Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2008 9:48:18 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
> Subject: Re: [Shib-Users] Roll call - Terracotta usage? 
> 
> 
> 
> Taylor Gautier wrote: 
>> Hello fellow Shibboleth users. Â   
>> 
>> 
>> I've noticed a slight increase in traffic pertaining to Terracotta on this 
>> list, thought I would join and see how I can help. Â So first question, 
>> how many people have tried Terracotta with Shibboleth - and how many are 
>> running the setup in production? Â I don't mind if that number is zero, 
>> just want to know! :) 
> 
> My guess would be zero currently. 
> 
>> For anyone that has tried the Terracotta integration, there is a simpler 
>> way to package up the Shibboleth configuration for Terracotta. Â To do so, 
>> Terracotta supports the notion of plugin modules called "TIMs" - 
>> Terracotta Integration Modules. Â I am thinking it would be a lot easier 
>> to package up the Shibboleth configuration provided in the source tree as 
>> a Terracotta module and would like your feedback on this idea. 
> 
> Do you have documentation on creating the TIMs, I couldn't find any when 
> I looked. 
> 
>> In doing so, your configuration would be greatly simplified. Â So would 
>> installation. Â After downloading and installing Shibboleth and then 
>> Terracotta, to install the Terracotta module you only have to run the 
>> integrated TIM update tool to get the shibboleth configuration, like so: 
> 
> This is one more command than what people currently would have to do. 
> 
>> From there, it would be a simple matter of putting together a 
>> tc-config.xml file that would be very small. Â It would only include the 
>> server and client configuration and the link to the shibboleth TIM, like 
>> so: 
> 
> While the current config file needs a couple updates, once it's set 
> people aren't going to have to change anything other than the server 
> information.  So using a TIM doesn't offer any additional benefit. 
> 
>> The final benefit is that having a tim-shibboleth would allow updates such 
>> as the recent additions listed by Greg Haverkamp to be updated into the 
>> TIM, and released back to the community in the TIM. Â The tim-get tool 
>> could then be used to get the updated TIM simply by using the update 
>> commnand: 
> 
> Or people could just grab an update file from the web.  Again, I don't 
> see the actual benefit of the TIM method.  But then, as I also said, I 
> couldn't find any real documentation on the TIM modules. 
> 

-- 
SWITCH
Serving Swiss Universities
--------------------------
Chad La Joie, Software Engineer, Net Services
Werdstrasse 2, P.O. Box, 8021 Zürich, Switzerland
phone +41 44 268 15 75, fax +41 44 268 15 68
,
 http://www.switch.ch



-- 
SWITCH
Serving Swiss Universities
--------------------------
Chad La Joie, Software Engineer, Net Services
Werdstrasse 2, P.O. Box, 8021 Zürich, Switzerland
phone +41 44 268 15 75, fax +41 44 268 15 68
,
 http://www.switch.ch