Re: No source for 2.3.14 in Maven repository

Daniel Dekany wrote:
> Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 6:31:37 PM, Jeff Ramsdale wrote:
> 
>> Ah, I assumed it was a slip since 2.3.13 has source (separate jar):
>>
>> http://repo2.maven.org/maven2/org/freemarker/freemarker/2.3.13/
>> I'm quite handy with Ant and mean no disdain when saying Maven (once
>> the learning curve is conquered) dramatically simplifies the build
>> management for more complex projects. In our case we're using
>> FreeMarker with Restlet, the latest release of which is hard-coded
>> to depend on 2.3.14.
> 
> BTW, I think they should depend on "[2.3.14,2.4)".
> See: http://freemarker.org/freemarkerdownload.html
> Do I suggest a bad practice there? I hope not.

My first inclination was to agree, but on second thought I think that 
would be a mistake. The Restlet devs would be reliant on the FreeMarker 
devs not releasing an incompatible change. Neither community should have 
to bear the risk of a breaking change when they (the Restlet devs) can 
safely declare a dependency on a specific FreeMarker version (which 
they've presumably tested). Maven provides the ability to override that 
dependency if necessary (which we did to look at FreeMarker source code).

On the other hand, direct consumers of FreeMarker (i.e. anyone not 
getting it as a transitive dependency) may choose to identify a version 
range in their dependency. If they run into a compatibility problem all 
they have to do is identify the last functioning version and specify it 
explicitly. Still, I almost never see version ranges used in Maven-land. 
Usually a version upgrade should be somewhat intentional, IMHO.

>> We use the m2eclipse plugin to provide Maven integration with Eclipse.
>> Thus, by adding Restlet with the FreeMarker extension to our pom 
>> FreeMarker 2.3.14 is downloaded automatically. A context menu provides
>> the option to automatically download and attach source (no need to go to
>> a provider's website, find the download, unzip, and configure project to
>> attach source). Since no FreeMarker source jar is posted this step 
>> fails. But it's a beautiful thing when it works!
> 
> So, you need this for looking into the source code with ctrl+click and
> for the JavaDoc "hints", and that's all. Right?

Correct.

<snip />

-jeff


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