Akio Sone (Jun 16 2025 at 14:51): Akio Sone (Jun 16 2025 at 14:51):This is a question about the future development of the Dataverse backend, i.e., Dataverse without the current JSF-based UI to be coupled with IQSS/dataverse-frontend, in terms of GitHub branch or repository.
Is there already a GitHub branch within IQSS/Dataverse repository, which is dedicated to this purpose (UI-less, backend-only Dataverse)?
Or is creating such a branch or repository still at the planning stage?
The latest Container Guide has an placeholder page entitled 'Backend Development' and I wonder when container images for the backend-only Dataverse would be available for testing various non-UI extensions or interfacing other applications.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 15:26):Great question. I don't think we'll have a no-jsf or api-only branch anytime soon.
We actually plan to run JSF and the SPA in parallel for a while. The hope is that the SPA will have enough functionality for most users so they won't have to use JSF.
Power users might need to switch to JSF for a while until certain features are implemented in the SPA.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 15:28):Right, we do have https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.6/container/running/backend-dev.html but it directs people to the "dev usage" pages. I guess I was just trying to be complete. I was trying to enumerate various ways people might use the containers:
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 15:28):1000 household uses! :crazy:
Akio Sone (Jun 16 2025 at 15:41):I guess that the 'Frontend Development' page of the Container Guide should include the link to "Running the Project Locally" section of "Developer Guide" page of IQSS/dataverse-frontend repo, and hopefully it would explain/elaborate what 'dev_dataverse' SPA developers are testing with, which is not a pure Dataverse-backend.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 15:47):Right, the old JSF UI is still in there.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 16:05):We definitely want to remove the JSF code once all the functionality is in the SPA. It'll probably take a while, realistically.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 16 2025 at 17:58):Our code coverage will go up when we delete the JSF code because it isn't tested. :sweat_smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 18 2025 at 21:23):It won't be so easy to remove the JSF bits, as a lot of things is deeply intertwined. It might be worth it though to try and move all the JSF bits into at least a package, if not a separate Maven module!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 18 2025 at 21:26):Putting it all into a separate Maven module is potentially overkill, though the cleanest approach. It would require dissecting the model classes in addition to the views.
Akio Sone (Jun 19 2025 at 14:07):One thing I'm afraid is that as long as we keep the JSF UI in the source tree, we would be forced to maintain the JSF-code to build a war file whenever a future release of Jakarta EE includes breakaway JSF-related changes.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jun 23 2025 at 13:54):Yes, definitely. We don't want to maintain that JSF code forever.
Last updated: Nov 01 2025 at 14:11 UTC