---- you Guillaume Rousse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote ----
> A perfect exemple: why is xml-api code from xml-commons stored into a
module
> named java/external ? Apart after careful examination of classes
files found
> three directories later in src/javax/xml, how can someone deduce he
has found
> was he was looking for ? And if it is a distinct subproject, why
doesn't it
> have a clear version tag ?
Yup, xml-commons is still getting started. Probably because it's
harder to focus on a larger level project with more organizational
goals rather than straightforward coding goals. Also because I've been
swamped in work-land and xalan land.
Docs are coming and will help a lot; both people who've never heard of
it before and people who know what it is.
xml-apis.jar comes from java/external because it is formed from
externally defined standards based code. I.e. the xml-commons project
isn't really the primary owner of this code - other organizations
outside of Apache are the originators. Also, this code is primarily
interfaces defining very widely-accepted standards. Thus I wanted to
make sure it was clearly differentiated from any other java-based code
we put in xml-commons (like small xmlities {xml+utilities} like Which,
the entity resolver from Norm, etc.).
If this seems like an esoteric point, trust me, I think it's one of the
most important points about the project. Code in java/external needs
to be managed much more carefully. We should really specify
development guidelines for that where we always mirror bugzilla reports
there to the original code 'owners' (SAX at sourceforge, DOM at w3c,
JAXP at Sun) and we should be careful when making changes so that users
who mix Apache projects with other projects won't find problems.
You might just say, why not just grab code directly from the standards
owners? I think it's useful to have xml-commons as a 'staging' area
that xml.apache.org projects get this code from, so we can apply small
bugfixes in a timely manner whereas the standards owners may not rev
that frequently.
Oh, and no, xml-commons has not had an official release yet. I was
planning on making one up when Xalan goes to 2.2 in January just to get
one out there; we might also want to tie it with one of Sun's releases
of JAXP or their xml packs. (Especially since I think they're actually
pulling their JAXP code from the xml-commons repository, which is kind
of cool!)
- Shane
=====
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.sig="Temporarily out to lunch"/>
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