> -----Original Message----- > From: robert burrell donkin > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 12:15 PM > To: Jakarta Commons Developers List > Subject: [beanutils] PROPOSAL: eliminate core dependency on collections > > > PROPOSAL: eliminate the core dependency on commons-collections
No doubt I'm sounding like a broken record and/or a lone voice in the wilderness, but I really don't like the whole idea of cloning classes from one Commons component into some other package to "eliminate a dependency". Commons came into being so that people could *share* implementations, and *avoid* cloning them. When classes are cloned, you no longer get the benefits of bug fixes coming from a common component, advances in the design of common components, more eyes looking at the classes in the context of a component whose purpose is well-defined, etc. When a developer needs to add functionality to an ex-client of a component like Collections, they might clone another class. Before long, people will lose track of how many cloned classes there are, and there will be so many hidden potential dependencies that it would make a whole lot more sense to depend on the original package, but it just won't occur to people to do that any more. I'm not going to -1 this, because it seems clear that there is support for it, but frankly I just don't understand the mentality that says it's a good thing to *not* share components that were designed from the get-go to be shared. Bizarre. -- Martin Cooper > > rationale - this will not only eliminate a sizable dependency for many > products depending on beanutils but also reduce chances of > compatibility issues with the various versions of collections. > > PLAN: > > 1 add org.apache.commons.collections.ArrayStack and > org.apache.commons.collections.Buffer source to beanutils (these are > required by the public API) > > 2 replace the references to FastHashMap with a private static > implementation. consider whether to replace this altogether. > > 3 factor out a new bean-collections jar under extras/bean-collections > containing the (cool) implementations of collections stuffs using > beanutils bean-magic. > > i've made a start on this work (so if anyone has any reasonable > objections, now would be a very good time to state them :) but i'd be > willing to change if anyone comes up with any improvements to this > plan. > > - robert > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
