Somebody has to compile them from source. In general, anything that is imported from another FOSS project ought to be looked at as a potential companion porting project. If it is needed by a given project, that is a good indicator that it would be useful to others.
Ideally, the library would just be imported into the project just as any other project would import it. If it is either not suitable for porting, or the version is somehow incompatible with existing projects, then keeping a private copy squirreled away seems reasonable to me. It is sort of the Java equivalent of static linking. If publicly delivered, the stability of the interfaces then becomes important. While generally we do not require intra-consolidation contracts, we may need them in the SFW consolidation. Sriram Natarajan wrote: > > > Petr Slechta wrote: >> >> The ant.jar file was mistake, it will not be part of the package. >> Sorry for the confusion! >> >> >>>> Do jar files need to be built from source code? >>>> >>> Yes, they must be built from source. >>> >> If this is true, then it makes porting of any Java application hard. >> Most of open source projects do not do that -- they just take the >> libraries and use them. It is Java, so it does not make any sense to >> compile them for different platforms -- the result would be always the >> same. Also we will not sustain/fix these libraries, so why to compile >> them? >> >> There is also question about sharing these libraries. As I said in >> previous mail, this was discussed on LSARC and I was hoping that this >> question is solved and closed. If not, should be LSARC reopened? >> Please look for LSARC discussion >> http://sac.eng.sun.com/Archives/CaseLog/arc/LSARC/2008/642/mail >> especially around paragraph >> >> " Is there case precedent that indicates that all libraries should be >> versioned when installed? What happens for consumers of various >> version of: dom4j.jar, jaxen.jar, jsr-305.jar, et al listed there - >> presumably those won't be symlinks? Given the amount of java >> applications and scaffolding that's in the project pipeline, are we >> heading towards java jar hell? " >> >> >> > Currently, tomcat - which is already in OpenSolaris - internally uses > lot of jar files without actually compiling them from source > > - Sriram > -- blu "Murderous organizations have increased in size and scope; they are more daring, they are served by the most terrible weapons offered by modern science, and the world is nowadays threatened by new forces which, if recklessly unchained, may some day wreak universal destruction." - Arthur Griffith, 1898 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Utterback - Solaris RPE, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Ph:877-259-7345, Em:brian.utterback-at-ess-you-enn-dot-kom
