>> Which would require jar-based frameworks, but jar-based frameworks
>> don't support nested jars.
>
> Why do you need a nested jar? If you have a description of
> transitive dependencies, couldn't you just download everything
> required to build the project and put it together? Do you have a use
> case where this solution doesn't work?
An issue of perspective, I suppose ... There's something nice about
being able to distribute a framework that has its dependencies
packaged nicely inside of it. I recognize there are definitely
potential conflict issues with this, though.
>> Q has a WOBootstrap that does, but we're still talking about
>> changing the way a large number of people deploy their apps. Not
>> to mention we have to then integrate Ivy with WOLips, not to
>> mention it has to work in Eclipse also.
>
> What about IvyDE [2]? Maybe it can solve almost all of your
> problems. :) (Again, I've never used this tool).
:) Always just a dance -- balancing wheel reinvention against nice
integration. It's often really hard to integrate these separate tools
in effectively. Our HTML editor is a great example of this. There
are like 10 HTML editor plugins for Eclipse, but it wasn't until we
slurped it in and hacked the hell out of it that we got (well, are
getting) an experience that doesn't suck. I'm also always mindful of
new people coming to the platform. Eclipse plugin management is a
very confusing thing for people, and to the extent that we can
minimize dependencies of the tools, I think we end up with a smoother
deployment process. I appreciate the VERY fine line between this and
madness, though.
>> That and I'm not even really sold on jar frameworks, though the
>> better split install build.xml makes it slightly better I guess. I
>> still come back to "make it easy for people" .... Ivy's certainly
>> an option, and I'm not at all
>> ruling it out, but I'm always sort of skeptical of the final result
>> of these things actually being a better experience for endusers of
>> the system.
>
> I'm not trying to sell Ivy or Maven Ant Tasks, because I have never
> used any of them. But I'm a long time Maven user. I cannot imagine
> how people can develop nowadays without a good tool for dependency
> management. And when I say dependency management, I mean all
> dependencies of a project. Not only WO frameworks. If I was an Ant
> user, I'll prefer to have a complete solution for the dependency
> management problem, even if I have some trouble to learn it in the
> beginning.
The problem is that all these tools suck ... The ramp up time is
totally obnoxious. I feel like I'm a reasonably smart dude, and every
time people start explaining Maven, my eyes glaze over. I'm sure once
you get over the hump it does its job quite well, but WO itself is so
complicated that I think we really need to focus on making the "zero
state" of the tools help the process, and telling people they need to
understand Ivy or Maven dependency management in order to deploy their
apps is this huge uphill battle we shove into the experience. I don't
have a good answer to all these issues .... I mean, I really don't
want to reinvent Maven (or Ivy), but on the flip side, I want
WebObjects developers to both be able to start working relatively
easily as well as support power users. Oh well ...
ms
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