--Leif
At 10:47 PM 2/13/2003 +0100, you wrote:
Hello, I'm thinking that Maven's repository could be used to distribute source and documentation along with the binary of a library. For each version of a library, the repository would contain the source code and the documentation, in two different .jar files. I browsed the archive and I don't think this idea surfaced before.This would enable several interesting features: * Not having to hunt around for the source or the documentation of a library when a problem arises. Personally, I try to keep around the source and the documentation of each library I use in a project. Managing this directory is time-consuming compared to Maven's repository. * Source-level debugging for libraries: many IDEs allow you to attach a source archive to a library, so you can debug directly in its source. Eclipse, JBuilder and Netbeans can do it, so I guess that the others can do it too. Their respective plugins could be modified to automatically add the source to their configuration files when they are generated by Maven. For anyone using the command-line, there are numerous tools that can mount a jar file as a file system (like Konqueror). * Pretty-printed version of the source of each library in the web site. Probably fairly intensive for big projects,but I think that it is worth it. Various issues I can think of: * The definition of what constitues the documentation can vary widly from project to project. In many cases, the documentation is a set of webpages, PDFs, .doc files and many other artifacts. Furthermore, the copyrights of theses pieces aren't always very clear. But there is at least one piece of documentation that is consistent across projects: Javadocs, so let starts with that. * Bigger administrative overhead due to the new files. * Increases the bandwitdh used at ibiblio.org. I don't know if it's a big problem or not. * Adding the files to the existing libraries would be a big job, and this can hardly be delegated to anyone because of the trust issue. However, since the files won't be executed, this is a little less of an issue. Of course this feature would be optional, activated by an option in the <dependency> section of each library. Now if you've read through this entire post, you can probably tell if this a just a pipe dream for some reason I overlooked, or if it is possible. Best Regards, -- David Garnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
