On Nov 19, 2007 9:39 PM, Jason Trump <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Xavier, > > I hope you'll forgive a late reply on this subject (and a post from a > new subscriber), but I only started reading the dev list archives > yesterday.
Late is *much* better than never :-) Thanks for your feedback! Your proposed "depender / dependent" and "dependee / > dependency" vocabulary sounds very natural. Compared to the "afferent > coupling / efferent coupling" language used by jdepend, it seems very > clear :) Great, I've just updated the project dependencies tutorial and used depender -> dependee for projects, I'm glad it sounds natural! > > On the subject of compact text representations, for whom are they? Are > they mostly for machines, or mostly for humans reading log files? Mostly for humans reading log files, writing documentation or discussing on the mailing list. I realize after several years involved in Ivy that we often have to use long sentences to explain common things that could be less verbose with good conventions. Moreover, if the representations chosen can be used for machines too (hence my proposal to add a strict mode in Ivy where some characters would be forbidden for module identifiers), it would make some other things possible, but it's not the main purpose of my proposal. > > One suggestion is to replace ';' with '@' to separate module name from > version. '@' is used to append a version number to commands in SVN (and > some other systems I think), so it will be familiar to many people. The > reading of '@' as "at" works naturally too, E.g. > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "ant at 1.7.0 depends on xercesImpl at 2.8.1" Indeed, it sounds good. My only concern with that is that we already use the @ in the revision when none is provided (working@<machine name> to be precise). So it may be confusing while reading the console. A solution could be to update this default revision. Maybe others have opinion to express? Xavier > > > Not a big deal, though. > > -jason > > PS. Ivy + IvyDE are awesome. > > On 11/1/07, Xavier Hanin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > In the world of dependency management we often need to speak about > modules > > involved in a dependency relationship. If A depends on B, we sometimes > need > > to talk about A not as A, but as "the module depending on B", or more > > generally "the module having a dependency on another module". Same for > B, we > > sometimes need to refer to it as "the module on which A depends" or > "the > > module on which another module depends. As being a non native English > > speaker, I often wonder if there are words to talk about these idioms > > clearly and concisely. According to what I found recently over the > web, some > > are talking about: > > A: depender, or dependent > > B: dependee, or dependency > > > > I think it would be fine if we could agree on some words, and > reference > > them in the documentation (on the terminology page for instance), and > use > > them when necessary. For instance the dependency documentation [1] > talks > > about master configuration, using depender or dependent (or whatever > we > > agree on) would probably make sense. > > > > This lead me to other questions about conciseness when speaking about > > modules and dependencies. Having a good and uniform text > representation of > > concepts involved in Ivy would be helpful when discussing them in the > > mailing lists and documentation (or in console output). We often use > '->' > > (dash greater than) as a text representation for a dependency; and > it's > > already used for configuration dependencies (aka configuration > mapping). > > Maybe we could agree on that, and maybe also on text representation > of: > > 1) a module without revision > > 2) a module with revision > > 3) a module with (some) configurations > > 4) a module with revision and (some) configurations > > 5) a module's artifact > > 6) a module's artifact with revision > > > > Maybe taking an example will make things easier to understand: > > Let's talk about Ant: > > org=org.apache.ant > > name=ant > > rev=1.7 > > (some) configurations=master,compile,runtime > > artifact= > > name=ant > > type=source (I take an example where type and ext are different) > > ext=jar > > > > ATM in Ivy (according to #toString() on > org.apache.ivy.core.module.idclasses): > > #1 [ org.apache.ant | ant ] > > #2 [ org.apache.ant | ant | 1.7 ] > > #3 ? > > #4 ? > > #5 [ org.apache.ant | ant ] ant.source > > #6 [ org.apache.ant | ant | 1.7 :: ant . jar ( source ) ] > > > > #6 used to be much more confusing in 1.4 (something like [ > org.apache.ant| ant ]/ant.jar > if I remember well), this is already an improvement. #5 is > > very bad. And overall the representations are not very concise. > > > > So, could we discuss about options and see if we can agree on > something > > clear and concise enough to be used both in Ivy itself and in the > > documentation and mailing list? > > > > I don't have time right now to cast some ideas, but go ahead! > > > Here is a proposition for those text representations: > #1: org.apache.ant#ant > #2: org.apache.ant#ant;1.7.0 > #3: org.apache.ant#ant[master,compile,build] > #4: org.apache.ant#ant;1.7.0[master,compile,build] > #5: org.apache.ant#ant!ant.jar(source) > #6: org.apache.ant#ant;1.7.0!ant.jar(source) > > And a couple of shortcuts: > module id, when organization is obvious or reader don't care: #ant > #6 when type == ext: org.apache.ant#ant;1.7.0!ant.jar > > So for instance if someone speaks about ant 1.7 which depends on > xercesImpl > 2.8.1, this could be written: > #ant;1.7.0 -> #xercesImpl;2.8.1 > > I think this would make reading logs easier, and speaking and > documenting > some things easier (eg the unit test fixtures). > > If we introduce a strict mode in names (where we forbid using # ; [ ] ( > ) > and ! in org/name/rev/conf/artifact/ext/type) then we could even parse > these > text representations safely. > > What do you think? Do you see any problem on using (in #toString()) and > documenting these representations? Maybe have some better ideas? > > Xavier > > Xavier > > > > [1] http://ant.apache.org/ivy/history/trunk/ivyfile/dependency.html > > -- > > Xavier Hanin - Independent Java Consultant > > http://xhab.blogspot.com/ > > http://ant.apache.org/ivy/ > > http://www.xoocode.org/ > -- Xavier Hanin - Independent Java Consultant http://xhab.blogspot.com/ http://ant.apache.org/ivy/ http://www.xoocode.org/
