In a library as old as GeoTools we have managed to accumulate some technical debt over time; this is often work that was undone or
incomplete.
For all of these the developers involve feel pretty bad; chances are they were out of time (or were on a branch with little feedback). So be kind and concentrate on the fixing.
Clean out Catalog Experiment
Create a new unsupported/catalog plugin with compile and test dependencies on data plugins
Copy the catalog specific code from main and the data plugins into unsupported/catalog
Find the GeoServer configuration experiment splice it in as a replacement; be sure to keep the test cases
Force uDig trunk to use it
The GeoServer configuration experiment has gone mainstream and as I understand it is specific to their requirements. The idea of a repository to manage DataStores is a good one; but we should wait until a volunteer has sufficient interest to take on the problem.
This issue is closed; the experiment is out of the way.