gistify388304.java

One of the consistent feedback that we got from the developers during the OpenDaylight Summit, ONS & other hackfests (conducted by SDN Hub) 
is the complexity in developing Apps for OpenDaylight. App Developers come from various background and expertise and may not have the same 
skill-set/Motivation as an OpenDaylight platform/infra developer & hence we have to make it much easier for the Developers to invest time 
in developing apps on/for OpenDaylight.

Am using the word "apps" loosely and it can represent both true applications that makes use of the existing infra bundles or developing
these infrastructure components as well.

Today, we dont have a streamlined incubation process for these developers to get started with ease. Few of us have been thinking about this 
and we have various ideas including proper User docs, API docs, Architecture discussions, FAQs, etc... While all of these are of immense help, 
we felt a more hands-on help will accelerate the adaption much faster.

With some great feedbacks & inputs from the community, few of us have come up with a ArcheTypes based App Template solution, which enables 
the developers to get started much quickly (< 1 minute) to build their first hello world OpenDaylight Application end to end.
We have a few examples on Archetypes available in ODL, but we dont have a more streamlined process with an eye towards making it a proper
Toolkit for any developer.

What are Archetypes  : https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-archetypes.html

Since OpenDaylight platform developers have the best insight into the project, if we write these archetypes for various scenarios,
then we will have a rich set of Templates ready to go, which developers can just choose from a catalog and can develop any kind of complex
apps in a matter of hours (not weeks).

We would like to demonstrate what we have to the TSC tomorrow (03/20) and get feedback from the community.

We also would like to propose a project (OpenDaylight Toolkit) : https://wiki.opendaylight.org/view/Project_Proposals:OpenDaylight_Toolkit
Please review it & we hope this demo will help answer some questions.

Thanks,
Madhu