Gentoo style pom dependencies
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Key: MNG-935
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-935
Project: Maven 2
Type: Wish
Environment: None appropriate
Reporter: Brian C. Dilley
I'm a long time Gentoo Linux (http://www.gentoo.org/) user, and i think that
Maven could adpot some idea's from gentoo's portage
(http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=1).
Gentoo has a concept of "ebuilds" (which can be compared to poms). An ebuild
is an install script of sorts for installing a particular piece of software.
An ebuild defines, among other things, what it's dependencies (other ebuilds)
are. There are two types of dependencies: optional and required. A required
depency is something that the software needs to be built or run, while an
optional depency is the exact opposite... it is optional at compile and run
time. Basically an optional depency is a feature that the piece of sotware
supports that isn't necessary for it to function.
There is also something in gentoo called "USE flags". Use flags are a system
scope set of parameters that determine how ebuilds are built... and which
features are included or excluded. For instance, "alsa" is a USE flag. If
your use flags have "alsa" in them then any application that supports Alsa
(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) as an optional dependency will be compiled
with support for alsa. Likewise, if your USE flags contain "-alsa" then
anything that has optional support for alsa will not be compiled with support
for alsa. I should also mention that if a particular ebuild requires alsa...
alsa will be built as well as it (because it requires alsa at compile/run
time)... but it and anything else that requires it will be the only piece of
software on the machine that has alsa support. I should also note that Gentoo
has what is called "profiles". Profiles contain (among other things) a default
set of USE flags for the general user, so in theory a Gentoo user doesn't have
to modify their USE flags whatsoever.
My thinking is that Maven could adopt this. Poms could specify required and
optional dependencies, and at a project level USE flags could be defined to
filter what gets included in a project. For instance someone using the Spring
Framework may not be using Hibernate... in their use flags "-hibernate" could
be defined so that maven knows not to grab hibernate (and all of it's
dependencies) just because they want to use the spring MVC framework.
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