Alfresco 6 Support

[deas]

Hi Peter,

I needed this thing working on Alfresco 6 and it looks like I succeeded. As you point out, version in module.properties requires a bump. Other than that, jackson shipping with Alfresco 6 has a slightly different package structure. Had to drop the sdk parent to get proper deps in.

You might remember that I am not a big fan of amp. Hence, I shifted things around a bit to make them more jar friendly.

This is actually the first time I am using this tool and from what I can tell, it still behaves as advertised.

You might want to check my fork.

Just let me know in case you'd like me to provide you with a PR.

regards
Andreas

[pmonks]

A PR would be great!

Just out of interest. are the changes backwards compatible with Alfresco 5.x?

[deas]

Package structure of jackson has changed a bit, but I think we can still target all versions of Alfresco with one artifact. It is really about two class imports and constructor initialization we need to replace - namely ObjectMapper and TypeReference. The easiest approach I could come up with is reflection. I'd be fine it and give it a try.

Feel free to test drive my fork before the PR comes in. It's just clone and mvn install.

Offtopic here, but I have just run into another issue. I need cm:content property type support. It is not there yet, is it?

Any opinion about a potential implementation of that?

[pmonks]

Took a look at this this evening, and will continue chipping away at it as I have time.

<mini-rant>
It's quite disappointing to see that AMP support has basically been dropped by Alfresco, necessitating the use of ghastly hacks such as the Maven shade plugin. That's going to cause no end of pain for users and customers who deploy more than a small number of extensions into the same JVM...
</mini-rant>

Regarding d:content properties, that's tracked as issue #5. I've added more commentary there.

[palojano]

Hi Peter, what is your plan to support Alfresco 6? Regards, Pavel.

[pmonks]

As mentioned above a PR would be welcome.

Sadly the Alfresco v6 SDK broke backwards compatibility of the build, and I have minimal time to spend on fixing things that previously worked.

[andrm]

@pmonks can you point to documentation where AMPs have been dropped?
https://docs.alfresco.com/6.1/concepts/dev-modules.html seems to imply that it is still possible.

[pmonks]

@andrm according to https://docs.alfresco.com/6.1/concepts/dev-extensions-packaging-techniques-amps.html, repository AMPs (such as the bulk import tool) are still dropped in the ‘amps’ directory, then the MMT is used to install them (as was the case in earlier versions).

This means the installation instructions should, in theory, remain the same. However there have been several reports (both here and on the mailing list) that this does not work, even after the module’s max version property is updated, suggesting that backwards compatibility has not been preserved.

[apiening]

May I ask if there is an update on this topic or what the current state is?
We're using Alfresco 6.1 and need to migrate our data from a 5.1 installation.
Is @deas fork still the best bet?
Or are there other options to import the files that has been exported with the bulk-export tool?

[pmonks]

@apiening I'm still awaiting a PR (from @deas or whoever has gotten AMP builds working on Alfresco v6). My recollection is that @deas' solution devolved to JAR packaging, but that's not a viable solution long term for a tool such as this.

[apiening]

@pmonks Thank you for the quick update. This does not sound like a short term solution to me.

While searching for a solution I stumbled upon the official Alfresco 6.1 docs at https://docs.alfresco.com/6.1/concepts/bulk-import-via-the-ui.html talking about bulk-import as if it were a core feature.
I tried to call the url prefix /alfresco/service/bulkfsimport on my Alfresco 6.1 install and I got a Bulk Filesystem Import Tool form where I can choose the import directory, target NodeRef and initiate the bulk import.
I'm confused about that, honestly.
I've not yet tried to do an import.
Can you tell how this integrated feature compares to this alfresco-bulk-import project?

[deas]

I understand there are people who prefer amps over jars. I am the opposite side of the spectrum. My fork solved a few issues for me. To be honest, I don't want to worry about splitting it apart to deal with one issue at a time or bringing it back to amp.

[shazada]

We're using a jar fork as well and works fine. Haven't tried it with 6.1 do.

[pmonks]

@apiening that's the embedded fork. While you're welcome to use it, keep in mind that it was an unapproved fork of an early pre-release version of the tool, that:

1. hasn't been rebaselined with upstream since it was forked (in 2011 or thereabouts, IIRC)
2. introduced several major bugs / limitations that have never existed in upstream (no support for parallel imports on Alfresco clusters, buggy "striping" algorithm, etc.).

@deas I understand your position, and hope you understand mine. Notably, JAR distribution can't support multi-JAR extensions and although the bulk import tool doesn't depend on any 3rd party JARs right now, there are enhancements being considered that will require that.

[apiening]

Ok got it. Thanks for the the explanations.
I gave the embedded version a shot and it failed in the first place due to exported attributes that are not known on the target system. Instead of skipping the unknown attributes it crashed with a stacktrace. I then removed the problematic attributes from the metadata xml files since they are not needed anyways and the import worked finde then.

Is there any kind of manual how to install @deas fork? I would like to give it a try but have not installed alfresco extensions other then AMP based. From my understanding I would need to compile it on my own and need to setup a dev environment just for that. I think the fact that Alfresco 6.1 is based on docker(-compose) doesn't make things easier in that regard.

By accident: Is there an option in alfresco bulk import to ignore specific attributes?
That would save me some time writing a script to clean up all metadata xml files by removing these.