Re: [alfresco-bulk-filesystem-import] AMP vs. JAR

[Peter Monks]

G'day David,

This is a general question about Alfresco's module (AMP/MMT) mechanism, so I've cc'ed the alfresco-technical-discussion mailing list (a better forum for general Alfresco questions).

More comments inline in [Deep Purple].

Cheers,
Peter

On Jan 22, 2014, at 2:07 AM, David G. <wak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello:

Just a simple question about BFSIT. Is it possible to convert the AMP file used to install the addon to JAR?

[pmonks] The BFSIT is a JAR file, wrapped inside an AMP file (which is required for deployment).  There is no supported way to deploy a naked JAR file to an Alfresco server - that's what AMPs are for.

It isn't something really necessary because the addon is installed and works well. But I have had problems with another modules when I uninstalled them after they were installed using AMP files.

Alfresco saves information about installed modules in its own database so if I install one and then revert the changes made using the original Alfresco/Share WAR files or if I install a new version of these webapps, messages like these are always logged every time I start Alfresco:

11:14:16,097 WARN  [org.alfresco.repo.module.ModuleServiceImpl] A previously-installed module 'org.alfresco.module.vti' (version 1.2) is not present in your distribution.

11:14:16,104 WARN  [org.alfresco.repo.module.ModuleServiceImpl] A previously-installed module 'org.alfresco.integrations.google.docs' (version 2.0.1) is not present in your distribution.

Probably, these messages can be simply ignored but do you know if these traces could be removed?

[pmonks] Yes those messages can be safely ignored and/or filtered out via careful log4j configuration.  The AMP / MMT mechanism probably could do a better job of removal in some cases, but currently doesn't.

The bigger challenge is that AMPs can introduce extensions (content models, actions, etc.) that then end up being referenced elsewhere in the system (e.g. by content, rules, workflows, etc.).  It's these cases where there is no way to perform a full removal as there's no obvious way to "cleanse" the data in the system that makes reference to those extensions.  For this reason the MMT didn't originally support removal at all.

With that said, the BFSIT is currently pure logic and doesn't provide any of these kinds of extensions, so in theory it would be possible for an enhanced version of MMT to cleanly uninstall it.

Here it is explained how to remove individual modules:

http://docs.alfresco.com/community/topic/com.alfresco.community.doc/tasks/dev-extensions-tutorials-simple-module-uninstall-amp.html

And here another users have discussed the problem (in the first link one user clearly explains how to to downgrade):

https://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=11589

http://govindaroul.blogspot.com.es/2012/11/uninstalling-amp-module.html

Shouldn't Alfresco automatically remove these traces when modules are uninstalled?

[pmonks] In the general case it's not that simple...

Thank you.

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[Peter Monks]

G'day David,

I suspect those were Share extensions, which can be deployed as "naked" JAR files.  Note that that mechanism is intended for development purposes only, and doesn't work on all app servers, so even there AMP files are the recommended packaging format for "real" (QA, production) deployments.

Cheers,
Peter

On Jan 23, 2014, at 1:18 AM, David G. <wak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Thank you very much for your answers. I know it's something more closely related to Alfresco modules installation mechanism so I really appreciate your help.

I only asked it here because I have seen that several addons are still deployed using JAR files. But I guess that AMP files are a better way to do it.

Thanks again.