Undocumented Build Requirements

["Craig R. McClanahan" <cr...@apache.org>]

I downloaded xml-axis via anonymous CVS and tried to build it.  The
documentation on prerequisite packages is incomplete (and possibly
inaccurate?):

- Must have servlet.jar on your classpath

- Must have xerces.jar on your classpath (org.apache.xml.serialize.*
  package)

- JDOM is documented as being required, but does not appear to
  actually be used?

The first of these requirements is a particular problem for me, because I
work with different versions of Tomcat (and therefore different
servlet.jar files) all the time.  Many Jakarta projects that use Ant are
migrating towards specifying a properties file in which an individual
developer can declare the location of dependencies like this:

  <property file="build.properties"/>
  <property file="${user.home}/build.properties"/>

and then use Ant's ability to create classpaths dynamically for the
compiler.

You might consider using such an approach for Axis in order to eliminate
dependencies on the user's current CLASSPATH.

Craig McClanahan