Re: [Rails-devel] External Libraries

[brett l. <bre...@gm...>]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:03 AM,  <ab...@o2...> wrote:
>     While playing around (still the on-tile symbols: not much time to do
> actual programming!) I noticed that at least Batik and log4j Rails uses are
> out of date. Newer versions are already available. This lead me to few
> questions:
>
> (1) Why not update them? Updating involves some risk but considering the
> frequency of Rails updates there shouldn’t be any real risk of serious
> problems. While keeping up to date allows developers to use public JavaDoc
> which is usually (given for latest version) and use new features. Also
> upgrading in small steps is usually easier then updating in larger steps.
>

We can. It's mostly just an issue of time. Someone has to take the
time to do it. :-)

> (2) Why are they placed in SVN? Why not require developers to have them
> installed where they prefer (and maybe use also in other projects)?
>

It was the easiest thing to support at the time we did it. It's not
set in stone and could be changed. Now that we have an Ant build.xml,
it could also be extended to fetch the required dependencies if they
don't exist locally. Again, someone still needs to dedicate the time
to doing it.

> (3) Why are they placed directly in project root (the “lib” directory)? When
> opening the project in Eclipse they are visible just as source and data
> files.
>

Same basic answer as 2. It was the easiest thing to do at the time we
did it. If there's a better way, we can change it.

> (4) Why not setup Eclipse (preferably in project files so this will be done
> only once and not by each developer) so that JavaDoc and sources for those
> libraries are accessible? This would ease development.
>

I believe the .project file in svn uses relative paths, so that it can
be reused. You just need to check out the right path.

Is this not the case?

> (5) How to add such library? When experimentally I tried to add Batik 1.7 I
> had some problems with “doc” and “sample” sub-directories as Eclipse wanted
> to compile files placed there too (since “lib” is in the root folder...).
>

You'll note that we only have the jars in svn, not the docs or sample code.

> (6) Will anyone update those libraries?
>

Maybe. The question is... who?

>     Adam Badura

---Brett.