On 4/23/07, Matthias Kilian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 05:36:15PM +0200, Scheper, Erik-Berndt wrote:
> Adding an ant script to download the required jars might be a simple way
> to solve the issue for this alpha release - at least there is a
> documented way to retrieve these dependencies. In forthcoming releases I
> would still prefer to have them included in the binary distribution.
Why? Ivy is just that -- a dependency resolver. So why not use it
to fetch its own (optional) dependencies? Ivy alone is enough to
retrieve via http (I think you could even go without ant).
Almost... To be used from the command line Ivy requires commons-cli. I'm
sometimes wondering if getting rid of this dependency wouldn't be
interesting to have a real standalone jar which could be used alone to
bootstrap a build or even an application. But this is beyond this
discussion.
Xavier
(Almost) all other apache products do it too (look in the geronimo
> binary for the sheer number of jars included there).
Yes, and this is bad style, IMHO. I've seen so much java projects
(IIRC, also some apache projects) including even different versions
of dependencies in the source and the binary downloads (or, worse,
using different dependencies in the downloads and in their documentation
and/or POMs).
But now you have Ivy, which is simple and at the same time powerful
enough to get those problems fixed once and for all. I'd love to
see more and more projects supplying their own (delivered) ivy files
in their source and binary downloads, so why not start with ivy
itself?
Of cause, distributing "bundles" (i.e. projects with all dependencies)
still may be an option, but IMHO, it should really be optional.
Ciao,
Kili
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