On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 16:06, Peter Donald wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was having a look at this and there is two things that jumped into my
> mind; labeling and the descriptor.
>
> How do we want to assign namespaces to libraries. There is three ways that
> I can think of off the top of my head;
> 1. arbitrary names with no order (ie jakarta-commons-jjar)
> 2. use internal package names or by DNS name separation (ie
> org.apache.jjar) 3. semantic categorization (ie
> system-software/updaters/jjar)
>
> (1) will mean could easily get collisions
> (2) means less chance of collision and matches java standards but does not
> add any semantics
> (3) while best for the user can be difficult to standardize. ie some people
> may use desktop/productivity/jword while others may use
> productivity/suite/jword etc.
>
> Now with descriptors. Quite a few specs are evolving to mandate use of
> jdk1.3 Extensions spec. Maybe jjar should use an enhanced version of that??
> ie Use all the fields it defines and an extra one, say "JJar-Category"
> which lists category described above.
>
> Because that descriptor is a bit ... err ... light on value, it may be best
> to supplement it with another descriptor that is shoved in
> META-INF/jjar.xml that has complete data you want. This would include
> things like description, maybe author and licensing details etc.
hmm ... even better. Maybe instead of creating a new attribute for category
you instead have a flag attribute "JJar-Compatible: true". If present it
mandates specific interpretations of VendorID, Extension Name and Version
strings. In particular it would require that VendorID/Extension Name look
like package names. ie
Extension-Name: org.jcp.servlet
Specification-VendorID: org.jcp.servlet
Implementation-VendorID: org.apache.jakarta
and version strings look like <major>[.<minor>[.<micro>]]
Specification-Version: 1.2.3
Implementation-Version: 1.2
This could be (somewhat clumsily) mapped to filename such as
org.apache.jakarta/org.jcp.servlet-1.2.jar
If we really wanted "flavors" such as debug/optimized/whatever we could also
add another attribute "JJar-Flavor: debug" or similar.
--
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
* "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, *
* and proving that there is no need to do so - almost *
* everyone gets busy on the proof." *
* - John Kenneth Galbraith *
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