Re: Maven dependency

Matthias Radestock wrote:

> I gather maven is adding the jars of declared dependencies to the 
> class path. So perhaps the difficulty with the above is that the jar 
> contains other jars/files rather than the classes themselves.


Exactly right.

> How can we get around that? Is there a way to create a bundle 
> containing multiple jars?


I tried for a while but basically Maven doesn't like it.  In their words 
from http://wiki.codehaus.org/maven/CreatingWebApplications :
<<
Maven is "limited" (by design) to creating one artifact per project. 
However using a plugin, additional artifacts can be created, however 
this technique should not be used to bypass the one artifact per project 
rule.

However, that being said, Maven can create a jar artifact as well as an 
associated war artifact using the same code-base.

If you have the desire to generate multiple artifacts as you have common 
code across the set, this is typically resolved by extracting that 
common code out into a separate artifact and using it via Maven's 
dependency mechanism.
 >>

There's also this argument:
  
http://wiki.codehaus.org/maven/WhyYouCantCreateMultipleArtifactsInOneProject


> Or perhaps each jar should be a different artifact?


So I think that would mean different projects as well.  Which could make 
sense.  For example, there could be "sisc-heap-lite" and 
"sisc-heap-full" which both depend on "sisc".

But what's the real problem with how Maven is bundling it now?

> But then what should happen to the non-jar artifacts like shell scripts?


I don't think shell scripts are relevant for the Maven repository.  The 
repository isn't a software distribution system; it's a canonical place 
for getting JAR dependencies.  There's no Java code that depends on sisc.sh.

There will always be the real distribution archive on the SourceForge 
site.  Incidentally, there's a plugin that seeks to automate that:
  http://maven-plugins.sourceforge.net/maven-sourceforge-plugin/

> Another thing I noticed is that your maven.xml duplicates an ant task 
> from build.xml. Is there any way that the maven.xml could just refer 
> to the ant task in build.xml? The instructions at
>  http://maven.apache.org/ant-guide/qna/antfarming.html
> appear to suggest there is.


Yeah, first I tried simply <ant:ant target="quantity"> but some 
necessary variable wasn't bound.  I think it was ${classdir}.  I just 
wanted to get it working.  I think Maven has a cleaner way to handle the 
Quantity issue, maybe using the <sourceModifications> block in the POM.


-T



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