Please start distributing Spring right

[scrop]

I want to let you know about a problem you guys create for organizations that would like to use Spring:

Your distribution is *totally* screwed up.

Here's the thing. We build everything from source, everything. If we can't - it's not used. Period. End of story.

Your distribution of Spring is near impossible to use because the "modules" you distribute have crazy dependencies that don't match your module demarcations. Your unit tests for what you call Spring Core depend on things from Spring JPA. You have code you have random code all over the place that depends on things that basically obsolete - like concurrent util backport. Or things I'll never use like JRocket. It's *worse* than J2EE ever was when you take a cold hard look at your dependencies.

Please! Just take the day or two that that it takes to clean up your dependencies.

[chudak]

Distribution dependencies and compile time dependencies are totally different things.

I'm not sure why anyone would insist on building all their open source dependencies themselves. Do you build all of the apache commons libraries too? Do you build the version of Ant and Maven that you are using to compile Spring?

[scrop]

I already told you we do. And we have 0 trouble building other 3p packages from source because they don't have such a crazy web of dependencies.

[McCloud]

I would start by changing the tone of your posts. Things like "Your distribution is *totally* screwed up." doesn't really invite people to help you out.

Second, if you use the Ant script provided with Spring, building Spring from source is quite easy. Even all the JARs it depends on are provided. I have not experienced any of the difficulties that you describe.

Third, why are things like backport-util-concurrent obsolete? There are a lot of people/companies still running on Java 1.4. And just that you don't use things, does not imply that nobody uses it. If you don't want all these compile time dependencies, why don't you just take the source and strip the framework to the bare minimum you need?

[kantorn]

I want to let you know about a problem you guys create for organizations that would like to use Spring:

Your distribution is *totally* screwed up.

You sound self-confident enough. Maybe you should buy the Spring Source enterprise products and go to them complaining.

And why on earth do you build every dependency yourself? Daft like Dicks hat band (that went around the hat nine times)

[chudak]

And why on earth do you build every dependency yourself?

Sounds like a variant of NIH syndrome...scary. Probably some goofy managers idea. If not, even scarier.

[kantorn]

Sounds like a variant of NIH syndrome...scary. Probably some goofy managers idea. If not, even scarier.

Aaah, the ol' NIH. Very scary indeed.

[dejanp]

You mean you start the ant build that comes with Spring source and it doesn't work?