Jeff,
Totally agree with you regarding the complexity of the build process
of jakarta-taglibs. Thanks for documenting what you went through
to make the community aware of the current flaws.
Here is my .02 on how I believe we could fix the issues
you raised in a clean and consistent way.
Comments please...
-- Pierre
----
I think that the major issue in the current build process
is that we have three different types of assumptions regarding
how 'required' jar files are accessed so that the build
process can be successfull:
1) Library already in the developer's classpath
This is the current assumption for a JAXP compliant parser.
2) Environment variable can *optionally* be set to access the
jar file. If it is not set, a default value is used which assumes
that the 'taglibs' build directory structure includes this
other apache project.
This is the current assumption for:
ANT_HOME ../jakarta-ant
BSF_JAR ../xml-xalan/bsf.jar
BSFENGINES_JAR ../xml-xalan/bsfengines.jar
SERVLET_JAR ../jakarta-servletapi/lib/servlet.jar
XALAN_JAR ../xml-xalan/xalan.jar
XERCES_JAR ./.xml-xalan/xerces.jar
3) Environment variable *must* be set to access the library.
This is the case for JAVA_HOME to get access to tools.jar.
Please note that execution of ant is done using 'java' (and
not $JAVA_HOME/bin/java).
To make it much easier for "off the shelf" builds to succeed
for everyone (whithout event having to read the README),
I would personally like to see us enforce access
to 'core' jar files with 3).
I.e. environment variables must be set to access the 'core' jar files.
[No assumptions on the developer's classpath (*not* 1), as well as
no assumptions on a build directory structure (*not 2)].
If the env variable associated with a required jar file is not
specified, then the build stops with an explicit error message
telling the user how to get access to the 'missing' project.
For example:
ERROR: You must set ANT_HOME to point at your 'ant' installation directory.
The library $ANT_HOME/dist/ant.jar will be added to the classpath
of the build process. You may download a binary distribution of
'ant' at the following url: ..."
With respect to 'non-core' jar files, i.e. jar files that are only required
for specific taglibs, I'd suggest a warning message telling the developer
that specific taglibraries won't be built because the specific environment
variable is not set. For example:
WARNING: Tag libraries 'x', 'y', and 'z' require access to the
'REGEXP' installation directory. Since environment variable
'REGEXP_HOME' is not specified, these tag-libararies will not
be built. You may download a binary distribution of
'regexp' at the following url: ..."
This would allow us to have a clean "self-documented" build process.
Comments?
