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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TEXT-36?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15802286#comment-15802286
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Raymond DeCampo commented on TEXT-36:
-------------------------------------
My 2 cents (not that anyone should care) - if I were including commons-text in
a project and wasn't interested in the class generating random strings (will
most of the commons-text users be in this scenario?) I would prefer there not
be a dependency on a random number generator library which seems like a strange
thing for a text library to depend on.
That said, if it were up to me, I would go with the TextRandomProvider
interface scheme EXCEPT that it should be eligible to be a functional
interface. Also it should have the same signature as the nextInt() method in
java.util.Random and UniformRandomProvider. This will make implementation easy
for Java 8 users. I am thinking something like:
{code}
public interface TextRandomProvider {
public int nextInt(int max);
}
// Then Java 8 users can do something like:
java.util.Random jur = new java.util.Random(1234L);
RandomStringGenerator gen = new RandomStringGenerator.Builder()
.usingRandom(jur::nextInt)
.build();
// or if they want commons-rng:
UniformRandomProvider rng = RandomSource.create(RandomSource.MT);
RandomStringGenerator gen = new RandomStringGenerator.Builder()
.usingRandom(rng::nextInt)
.build();
{code}
Then in the javadoc for the class put examples using commons-rng and that's
what 99% of the people will use anyway. Plus there's no dependency on
commons-rng unless you are actually using the functionality.
People still on Java 7 will have to implement the interface but the number of
users on 7 will be diminishing so I'm not too concerned about inconveniencing
them.
> Dependency on "Commons RNG"
> ---------------------------
>
> Key: TEXT-36
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TEXT-36
> Project: Commons Text
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: Gilles
> Labels: api
> Fix For: 1.1
>
>
> This is a follow-up of a
> [discussion|https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TEXT-34?focusedCommentId=15762623&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-15762623]
> held in TEXT-34.
> IMHO, there is no harm in depending on the ["commons-rng-client-api"
> module|http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-rng/commons-rng-client-api/javadocs/api-1.0/index.html]
> of Commons RNG; the "zero dependency" mantra does not hold here, since TEXT
> already depends on LANG.
> OTOH, I see that it is counter-productive (i.e. it harms the Commons project
> as a whole) to not advertize or use other Commons components, despite the
> "own dog food" phrase appearing recurrently on the "dev" ML.
> Rather than having people blindly use {{java.util.Random}}, we should allow
> them to choose wisely, based on full information.
> IMO, that means to indeed use {{UniformRandomProvider}} in order to raise
> awareness about alternatives to the sub-optimal algorithm used by the JDK.
> However, if some Commons developers do not trust that the
> {{UniformRandomProvider}} interface can be stable enough for TEXT, then we
> should follow Jochen Wiedemann's advice (cf. archive of the "dev" ML) and
> define TEXT's own interface to random numbers, with bridges to it from
> {{UniformRandomProvider}} and from {{java.util.Random}}.
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