Splitting agents into their own installable packages allows us to separate agent releases from the release schedule of fossology as a whole. It also allows users to customize what agents people want on their system. For example, there has been a lot of confusion over the pkgmetagetta agent. The current (v 1.1) system requires it to be installed or else the scheduler self-test will fail. This is true even if the user never wants to use that agent. Separage agent packages will also, hopefully, encourage others to create agents since the requirement to include them into a fossology release will go away.

Possible steps involve: 1) moving Scheduler.conf into the database. This will make it easier to update when agents are added or removed. 2) Scheduler selftest() needs to only test installed agents. 3) Agents need to be split out of the package release (makefile, docs, pkg config files) 4) Most agents can be tested outside of fossology. The agent pkg can include its own tests (standalone and with scheduler). 5) Pkg includes all cli versions and UI files. 6) May want to think about using the database to store jq_args and runonpfile for each agent, rather than having to specify them on each job queue. This means that jq_args would have to understand parameters. The advantage would be to set the stage for simplier job queuing.