Remote boot library 2017.5.0 is not backwards compatable to xl-deploy 6.x

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We have run into issues with the 0.5.0 release updated to reference com.xebialabs.deployit.engine:remote-booter:2017.5.0 causing disconnects after the DAR package is uploaded to xl-deploy but before the deploy task is created on xl-deploy version 6.0.3. In a support ticket with XebiaLabs https://support.xebialabs.com/hc/en-us/requests/10044 we were informed that the remote-booter library is an "There is no publicly supported interface to the remote booster plugin. There is nothing in the design of this library to facilitate its use here. The original author chose to do so but it is not supported. There is no documentation of it's use (and that is not unintentional) so there is no documentation about compatibility." XebiaLabs also gave us the following compatible version mappings:

• 2017.5.0 is available since XL Deploy 7.1.0
• remote booter version 2016.2.3 --> XLD 6.0.3
• remote booter version 2016.2.5 --> XLD 6.0.5

We have resolved this issue by recompiling gradle-xld-plugin against 2016.2.5 which shipped with xl-deploy 6.0.5 (we also validated that it is working with xl-deploy 6.0.3).

We would like to use this issue to discuss possible ways to address the support and version compatibility issues with the community plugin, xl-deploy releases and the remote-boot library.

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We have opened a feature request with XebiaLabs to request future support for the remote-booter or other supported plugin to use Gradle to access xl-deploy: https://support.xebialabs.com/hc/en-us/requests/10071

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In productoin we are using supported XebiaLabs maven plugin 5.1.0 which uses remote booter 2015.2.10 in our Maven based flows. Even the lastest maven plugin 6.0.1 uses remote booter 2017.3.0 which is not as late as the 217.5.0 version used in the Gradle 0.5.0 plugin. It looks like there is some forwards compatibility with the remote-booter library (not documented and not supported) but the backwards compatibility with the xl-deploy 7.1 release has at least one known issue.