design help

[Jason Nerothin <ja...@gmail.com>]

I'm implementing a maven build on a medium-sized code base.

The production dependency tree looks something like the following:

n -> ...  -> C -> B -> A
C->B

But there's a problem class PC in test "branch" of B, that "downstream"
tests (n -> ... -> C) depend upon. It's a dependency quagmire, with a ton of
static methods that new up test instances of all varieties. Most of these
Foos and Bars are defined in B.

So, I've chosen to draw a line in the sand and put PC into a new testing
utility project test-B-utils. But, not surprisingly, many tests in B use PC
as well.

Options I can think of:

1. Move PC to src/main (kind of like the legacy build) and exclude PC from
the production build (ignore the dependency problems).
2. Stick an interface for PC upstream (test-A-utils) and return extracted
interfaces for all Foos and Bars. Use dependency inversion to build up
PCIfaces in B and test-B-utils. Deal with some overlapping functionality in
PCforB and PCforEveryoneElse (test scoped).

Does anyone have a simpler or better mechanism?

JPN