[Springframework-developer] Optional dependencies

[Rod J. <rod...@in...>]

Guys,

I've just been discussing our forthcoming Struts integration with Yann and
Paul.

This raises a problem that's likely to recur. This will probably involve
adding a small number of classes that are Struts-dependent. But not all
developers might be interested in them.

In the following, read "Struts" to mean "any third party product some
classes will depend on but which aren't of interest to everyone".

How can we prevent our whole source tree being Struts-dependent and prevent
developers uninterested in Struts from having to download the relevant Jars?
* Make it a separate CVS module?  But this will lead to a profusion of CVS
modules. Harder to build etc.
* Put it in the main module and change the Ant build script to compile the
necessary classes and run the the relevant tests only if it finds Struts on
the classpath? This could eventually make the build script very long and
complicated.
* Better ideas I haven't thought off?? How do other projects handle this?

From a distribution point of view, many users won't want the Struts classes
either. We could make them a sep download. Or we could just include them in
one of the main Jars, and they wouldn't do any harm unless they were used
without Struts.

From a documentation view, we'll also need a dependencies table, showing
what depends on what.

Regards,
Rod

____________________________________________________
Rod Johnson
J2EE Architect and Author
+44 7973 409 132

Author of "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development"
(Wrox Press, October 2002).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1861007841/

http://www.wrox.com/books/1861007841.htm

http://www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/find.aspx?author=Rod+Johnson