[jira] Commented: (MNG-2369) Generic 3rd Party DotNet Libraries not appropriately handled

["James Carpenter (JIRA)" <ji...@codehaus.org>]

    [ http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2369?page=comments#action_67412 ] 

James Carpenter commented on MNG-2369:
--------------------------------------

To: dev@maven.apache.org
Subject: MNG-2369: Generic 3rd Pary DotNet Libraries not appropriately handled

I am actively using the maven csharp plugins in the maven plugin sandbox.  Of the bugs I have reported (MNG-2367, MNG-2369, MNG-2370, MNG-2371) by far the most painful for me is "MNG-2369: Generic 3rd Pary DotNet Libraries not appropriately handled" found in JIRA at: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2369.

I hope to have time to tackle this problem in a week or two, and would appreciate any feedback you can give regarding my proposed solution.  Any pointed feedback on the following will be particularly useful:

1) Which class/plugins will be affected (I have an idea, but probably missing a few)
2) Which pre-compile phase is best for my artifact pre-processing?
3) Whether a custom lifecycle should be used. (It seems I should really do the artifact pre-processing between the process-resources and compile phase of the default lifecycle)
4) The best choice for placing the pre-processed artifacts.  (Should this be another directory alongside ${user.home}/m2/repo whose location is governed by the settings.xml file?)

If convenient please attach your feedback as a comment on the JIRA issue.

Thank you for your time and effort spent reading and replying to this email.

Sincerely,
James Carpenter
email: james.le.carpenter@jpmorgan.com

> Generic 3rd Party DotNet Libraries not appropriately handled
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>          Key: MNG-2369
>          URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2369
>      Project: Maven 2
>         Type: Improvement

>   Components: Sandbox
>  Environment: Windows XP
>     Reporter: James Carpenter

>
>
> The csharp plugins work great when using .Net dependencies built with the csharp plugins, but don't work in the general case.
> Problem Statement:
> (Note: As a Java developer, I might mess this up a bit.)
> A .NET assembly contains a manifest which lists the assemblies it depends upon.  In addition to checking digital signatures for public assemblies, the classloader (whatever MS calls it) expects the filenames of the dependencies to match that described in the manifest.  The problem is the maven repository structure imposes a particular naming convention upon the artifacts placed within it.  So you can't just take a third party dll change its name to fit into the maven repo artifact naming convention and create an associated POM.  Artifacts built by maven using the csharp plugins match the maven repo artifact naming conventions and the assembly manifests contain dependencies whose names are consistent with the maven repo artifact naming conventions.
> Tatical Solution:
> The nasty tatical solution I am currently using, is to simple refer to any 3rd party dlls as system dependencies.  (<scope>system</scope>)
> Potential Strategic Solution:
> I believe the solution is to create another maven artifact type to support 3rd party dlls.  The artifact actually stored in the maven repo should be an archieve of some sort (jar, zip, etc.).  During the process-resources (some phase prior to compilation, might need custom lifecycle) phase these 3rd party dependencies would be downloaded by the ArtifactResolver and unarchieved in some directory structure which maintains the versioning through directory naming, but not by file name.  The dll filename would be the same as the original name of the 3rd party dll (most likely implementation choice is simply to let the archieve maintain the original name).
> When maven builds the classpath, any artifact of this new type would be represented in the classpath as the path to the unarchieved dll.  (The current csharp compiler plugin sees these as the path to the local repo.)
> I believe, it will actually be necessary to produce two new artifact types.  One will be used for "managed" dependencies and another for native "unmanaged" dependencies.  This distinction is important because the csc (C# compiler) only wants to know about "managed" dependencies.  (See as /resource arguments to csc compiler.  Refer to plexus csharp compiler code for details.)
> I'm not sure my proposed solution is 100% accurate, as I still don't know the maven internals that well, but I think its close.

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