I would like to raise the issue of using 3rd party libraries with Derby.
For example, in another thread we are talking about command line interfaces. Traditionally Derby has implemented all its own parsing for this included in the main or tool jar. A lot of other Apache projects use commons-cli which is a small (<32k) library that implements this functionality; using this would save coding but create an external dependency.
I would be interested in the community's view on using this type of library code. Should we:
a) stick with what is done now and use our own versions
b) use external libraries and require the user to make sure they are available (e.g. are on the classpath)
c) use external libraries and a manifest class-path entry to ensure they are included
d) have the build include the library content in derby.jar
e) some other alternative
-- Jeremy
