Prototype Iguana 6 Channel Converter

This is something I am building out incrementally starting with a few customers. It’s not finished yet but is proving helpful in helping us figure out how we can streamline the conversion process.

You need to be running Mac OS X or have an adventurous spirit in porting code.

I have only tested the code on Mac OS X for now. To get the code working on windows will require refactoring the code to handle directory separators the way windows does them \ instead of / characters.

Windows support will come after a few more iterations.

Create a component using +FROM URL - use git@bitbucket.org:interfaceware/iguanaconverter.git

git@bitbucket.org:interfaceware/iguanaconverter.git

This the component repository:

https://bitbucket.org/interfaceware/iguanaconverter/src/main/

Edit the custom GitRepo component property to point to a channel export from Iguana 6

The default for this is currently

git@github.com:interfaceware/iguana-tools.git

Funnily enough most of the ‘tools’ in this repo no longer make sense in the context of Iguana X. But it’s a helpful starting point for my conversion prototype work. Another interesting repo to try is:

git@bitbucket.org:interfaceware/export.git

Run it once to get the _Import URL

After the first run it will create a repo called _Import.

Run it a second time to create components

We need the source repo _Import before we can iterate through and create Iguana X components for all the parts of an Iguana 6 Channel.

Run it a third time to copy the code and establish connections

The components representing the translators in the channel cannot be populated until they exist. In this phase the translator code should be copied.

From reading the code how could a more detailed map of LLP server components be done?

Expect a lot of things not to work at this stage

This is a work in progress. Some of the pieces I am working on are:

Get channel connections done
From HTTP(S) channels don’t work - we haven’t got the backwardly compatible APIs yet
DBS conversion is a work in progress.
LLP and File components are partly converted - the Iguana X equivalent components are much simpler
Plugin components are converted with placeholder components - contact me directly if you are wondering how about how to deal with plugins

Where is this going?

I am optimistic we can automate most of the work in converting Iguana 6 to Iguana X code. Doing the conversion in this way is very powerful since it will give final control to each customer to go the last mile in terms of doing the conversion in manner which helps you each get the best conversion possible.

It makes it possible to customize the script to target specific problems that might only impact on your user cases of Iguana. More to say about that later.

For now I am working with a few early adopters to use this script as a tool to speed up our process of identifying and eliminating gaps.