Re: Use of 3rd party libraries

[Dibyendu Majumdar <di...@mazumdar.demon.co.uk>]

David Van Couvering wrote:
> I like code reuse rather than having to write and maintain our own work. 
>  That's a big pull of open source is building from what others have 
> done.  I vote for including the libraries in derby.jar, rather than 
> having jar-file explosion.

Code reuse is a good idea, but there are downsides to using external 
products. I think that before any external product is used, there should 
be a vote on it.

There should be some criteria for selection.

Some of the problems with including external products that I have found 
in my experience are:

a) Additional dependencies get dragged in. This makes the distribution 
large.
b) You tend to get more baggage than you need. You may have wanted a 
simple command line facility, but you end up with a whole host of other 
features you do not need. Add dependencies to that list, and the problem 
is exacerbated.
c) Issues with licensing.
d) What happens when one or more product goes out of maintenance? This 
happens more often with OpenSource projects.
e) Quality issues - you need to worry about bugs in other products.

I also think that adding other libraries to derby.jar is a bad idea, 
though I can see why you are suggesting it.

There seems to be no easy answer to code reuse, unfortunately. There is 
no doubt we should have more of it, but ... from a logistics point of 
view, there are issues.

My vote is for:

a) stick with what is done now and use our own versions
d) have the build include the library content in derby.jar
e) if using an external product could really save effort - and help 
avoid reineventing large amounts of code, then the proposed product 
should be subjected to a vote.



Regards

Dibyendu

Re: Use of 3rd party libraries

[Dibyendu Majumdar <di...@mazumdar.demon.co.uk>]

Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> My vote is for:
> 
> a) stick with what is done now and use our own versions
> d) have the build include the library content in derby.jar
> e) if using an external product could really save effort - and help 
> avoid reineventing large amounts of code, then the proposed product 
> should be subjected to a vote.

Sorry, I did not mean d).
I think it would be nice if all dependencies are distributed along with 
Derby, but not in derby.jar.

Regards