Modularity : was Re: [Geotools-gt2-users] 3D

[James M. <jma...@ps...>]

>
>>maven target that specifies smaller jars.  It would just include the 
>>classes that it wants.  If someone is to write one we would be more than 
>>happy to include it in the main project.xml files, some target like 
>>'build small'.
>
>I've had a quick look at the project.xml and it's not exactly trivial the 
>way things are configured.

Indeed its not (and the maven.xml file is even worse), most of it is from 
the days before the maven multiproject goal and a ton more of it was to 
handle problems found only in very old versions of Maven.

There are two things which get in the way of pulling things apart at the 
moment, unit testing and the lack of an interface only module.

Much of main has unit tests and it needs data files to drive those tests, 
as a result a lot parsing code is inside main in order to make that 
possible, I'd rather it wasn't but...

Once upon a time we had an interface only module (core) and a large number 
of small modules (see our old cvs tree 
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/geotools/geotools2/geotools-src/) 
that was found to be too complex to work with so most of the modules (inc 
gui, filter and rendering) ended up inside a new mega module known as 'main'.

Once the GeoAPI project matures we will once again have an interface only 
'module' and it may well be possible to start breaking main up again 
(though perhaps not into quite so many pieces)

James