On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> There are two areas that I see commons as poor at achieving - release early > release often and dependencies. The code itself is generally very good > (despite what some might say). Agreed on both. > [lang] is an example of this. It has needed a release for some time, if only > to fix some of the glaring bugs in 2.0. It has also had changes applied to > it that increase dependencies. [io] is out, so unless anyone is against it, I'll start working on [lang] bugs on my Saturday evening Apache sessions. > I know that many reading this don't get my point here. Perhaps if I used the > word coupling instead that would help? In the Validate case, there is no > need for Validate to be coupled to StringUtils and ArrayUtils. It wasn't in > its original design, I was just reverting code back to 2.0. > > This extends to other packages - ideally, no subpackage within lang should > depend on another. We won't achieve that, but it should be a basic goal. (It As a basic rule, I think it's pretty fair to state that package hierarchy should be obeyed as far as dependencies goes. This means that a package's classes may not depend on a sibling package, or a child package, but it may depend on a super-package or classes within the same package. Looking at the Validate example, I think it's pretty small fry. It's in the same package as String/ArrayUtils, so logically should be able to depend on them, and it's merely the isEmpty methods. I'm +1 to maintaining the isEmpty calls, but do agree with Stephen's general principle. > Finally, it should be noted that [lang] has about 30 open calls, and many > are valid. This suggests a wide user base who want this component supported > and improved. The issue for us is more to do with [lang] satisfying our own > personal isues already, so we don't feel motivated to do anything about it - > its not our itch any more. But somehow, we need to at least get 2.1 out, > then take it from there. Agreed, and I've been slacking. > [lang] is actually a great achievement, as almost certainly the most widely > used library of its type. Lets not lose that achievement. My sentiments too. Hen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
