version numbers in jars

[Ceki Gülcü <ce...@qos.ch>]

The following is from http://www.ibiblio.org/java/#recent

I have a request to make of the log4j team, as well as all the other
Java programmers at the Apache Project, IBM alphaWorks, Sun, and
everyone else who distributes JAR archives. Could you please attach a
version number to all your JARs? I maintain several systems whose ext
directories I try to keep in sync. However, it's extremely difficult
to do this when there's no straight-forward way to look at log4j.jar
(or xercesImpl.jar, servlet.jar, jedit.jar, saxon.jar, or any of the
several dozen other jar archives I work with on a daily basis) and
quickly tell which version it holds. I personally experience this
problem mostly with XML related jars, but the problem is hardly unique
to XML. It's especially problematic when some other software requires
a particular version of a third-party jar. For instance, IBM
alphaWorks' XML Security Suite works with Xerces 2.0 beta 2 but not
earlier or later versions. The Apache XML Security project works with
the release version of Xalan 2.2 or later. My own XInclude software
works with Xerces 1.4.0 through 1.4.3 but not earlier or later
versions.

Mostly I just add numbers to the jar archives when I copy them into my
ext directory. However, that step is often forgotten, and it's almost
never been done when I'm working with somebody else's system
(e.g. trying to debug some student's homework for him or her). And
when a distribution like FOP bundles several third party jars like
Batik and the Bean Scripting Framework, they often don't bother to
tell you which version they've bundled. It would be much easier if all
JARs included appropriate version numbers in their names. It's also
important that JARs name themselves with their sources for JARs that
may come from multiple places. A good example of what to do is the
Bouncy Castle JCE implementation. It's called
"bc-jce-jdk13-112.jar". You can tell at a glance that it's version
1.1.2 of the Bouncy Castle implementation of the Java Cryptography
Extension for Java 1.3. Even if that isn't obvious, you most certainly
won't confuse this with any other implementation of the JCE (of which
there are several).


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