On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 10:58:21PM -0700, Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > > Do you have a position on including a jakarta-regexp.jar (or a
> > > jakarta-regexp-1.2.jar or a jakarta-regexp-1.3-dev.jar) directly in
> > > jakarta-tomcat-4.0/lib so we can build it without synching and
> > > building jakarta-regexp?
> >
> > I'm positive Jon will be +1 for this :-), but I'm very -1 for reasons that
> > have been discussed at length on this and other lists in the past.
> > Storing JAR files is evil, because it creates dependencies on those
> > particular versions of the JAR files and you cannot reliably recreate a
> > release purely from sources.
>
> The dependencies are already there, and always will be. The only
> difference is that at present, the actual jars can slip out from under
> you at any time (which actually just happened to me -- while you
> weren't looking, jakarta-regexp changed the name of their jar file
> which broke your build).
>
Having seen *way* too many people get burned by loading binaries into CVS
(usually caused by API changes in the projects you depend on, plus the
resultant inability to reliably recreate an old version from sources), I'm
unalterably opposed to putting JAR files into CVS except in extreme
circumstances (i.e. sealing violations).
People who have known me in open source projects for a while will quickly
realize how unusual that position is for me -- about most things I'm
much more easygoing. But I will not willingly participate in any project
that uses checked in JARs as a standard practice. I've gotten (and seen
on others) too many scars from that behavior to find it acceptable.
Craig
