Spring Dependencies Deployment (2)

[stepper]

Hi there,

a topic with the same name has been sent last year.

I'd also like to propose a restructure of the lib/ folder,
but in the opposite direction:

would it be possible to introduce an addtional folder level
between lib/ and the library name?

That would make it much easier to automate the process
of splitting the whole Spring Framework into the proposed
modules and their individual dependencies!

I've never heard of some of the jars before and since I only
use core, aop, dao, jdbc and transaction, it's very hard for
me to discover which jars can be safely omitted from the path.

I think it would also be a good idea to emphasize which
jars are really optional (like jdo-stuff, ibatis, ...):

lib/core/jakarta/jakarta-commons-logging.jar
lib/core/opt/log4j/log4j.jar

What do you think?

Cheers
/Eike

[Martin Kersten]

Well this wouldn't work that good I guess. Some libraries are needed for quite more then one sub-package. That's why I favour slicing the whole framework into sub-projects each being devoted for another main audience. I dont need web but I have to check which jar I can remove from the lib collection. I don't like unused libraries poluting a developing or production environment.

But anyways. Maybe you can find a suitable dependency hierarchy.

To check dependencies, this simple method may help you (takes about 5min).

1. Just use an IDE (Eclipse for example). Import the whole src.

2. Rip of the parts of code you dont need.

3. Add all jars. The code should compile now meaning all dependencies are resolvable.

4. Now copy the src to a new project

5. As long as the new project does not fully compile, copy a missing jar from the first project to the second one. If you dont know where a dependency comes from - I dont know much of the jars either - just refer to the project with the full jars added and check where the dependency comes from.

6. You are done. Takes you about 5 min and is only needed once you upgrade your spring version. Meaning wasting 5min every half a year / a year. We only upgrade the Spring version once we need a new feature.

Maybe by doing this it would be possible to tie up dependencies + source for several target audiences (sub projects anyone? ). I dream of a zip I can download to do anything but no web no j2ee. That would make it more easy. I think the framework now utilizes 15MB of libs - I know only 5 MB of those. :-(


Cheers,

Martin (Kersten)