[Idea] Allow storing of analysis configuration externally

[vmassol]

Right now the analysisConfigurationFiles config section takes paths or files:

<analysisConfigurationFiles>
            <file>${project.basedir}/config/filter.json</file>
            <file>${project.basedir}/config/ignore.json</file>
            <file>
              <path>${project.basedir}/config/json-data-for-many-things.json</path>
              <roots>
                <root>configuration/revapi</root>
              </roots>
            </file>
        </analysisConfigurationFiles>

It would be nice to refactor the code at

revapi/revapi-maven-plugin/src/main/java/org/revapi/maven/Analyzer.java

Line 322 in eb7d36d

private void gatherConfig(AnalysisContext.Builder ctxBld) throws MojoExecutionException {

to support URLs, which are more generic than File (a file can be specified as file:///...).

This would allow storing the analysis configuration externally. One example would be to store it in a wiki page. This could make it simpler to edit and generate reports from it directly inside the wiki.

[vmassol]

Along with this idea, we would also need a config param to not fail the build if the config cannot be accessed; in this case a one line warning would be reported explaining that the check is skipped because the config file couldn't be accessed. This would cater for still allowing to build a project even in offline mode.

An alternative would be to support the offline -o param of Maven and not try to download remote config in this case and skip the revapi checek.

[vmassol]

FTR I got this to work with the following maven config:

Top-level POM:

<pluginManagement>
...
        <!-- Download the Revapi config file from an XWiki page -->
        <plugin>
          <groupId>com.googlecode.maven-download-plugin</groupId>
          <artifactId>download-maven-plugin</artifactId>
          <!-- Lock down plugin version for build reproducibility -->
          <version>1.2.1</version>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <id>download-revapi-config-file</id>
              <phase>verify</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>wget</goal>
              </goals>
              <configuration>
                <url>http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Revapi/?xpage=plain&amp;raw=2&amp;outputSyntax=plain</url>
                <outputFileName>revapi.json</outputFileName>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}</outputDirectory>
                <skip>${xwiki.revapi.offline}</skip>
                <skipCache>${xwiki.revapi.cache}</skipCache>
              </configuration>
            </execution>
          </executions>
        </plugin>
        <!-- Used for checking backward compatibility (binary and source) -->
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.revapi</groupId>
          <artifactId>revapi-maven-plugin</artifactId>
          <!-- Lock down plugin version for build reproducibility -->
          <version>0.4.3</version>
          <dependencies>
            <dependency>
              <groupId>org.revapi</groupId>
              <artifactId>revapi-java</artifactId>
              <version>0.6.3</version>
            </dependency>
          </dependencies>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <id>revapi-check</id>
              <goals>
                <goal>check</goal>
              </goals>
            </execution>
          </executions>
          <configuration>
            <oldVersion>${xwiki.compatibility.previous.version}</oldVersion>
            <skip>${xwiki.revapi.skip}</skip>
            <analysisConfigurationFiles>
              <file>${project.build.directory}/revapi.json</file>
            </analysisConfigurationFiles>
          </configuration>
        </plugin>

Using it in some POM:

      <plugin>
        <groupId>com.googlecode.maven-download-plugin</groupId>
        <artifactId>download-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.revapi</groupId>
        <artifactId>revapi-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>

The only issues are:

• A bit cumbersome (we need to declare the 2 plugins). I still believe it would be an nice built-in feature, but at least we know of a work around now ;)
• The download-maven-plugin doesn't support an offline mode ATM but we should be able to use its failOnErrorproperty which is in version 1.2.2 (not released yet, latest is 1.2.1): wget warn instead of fail download-maven-plugin/download-maven-plugin#48. However revapi fails if it doesn't find its config file.

[vmassol]

Related thread on the xwiki.org mailing list: http://markmail.org/message/s6juivbxfvbcdkgr

[vmassol]

Just realized revapi already has a failOnMissingConfigurationFiles config param

[vmassol]

Actually after more thinking I don't think this is such a good idea. See #29 (comment)