On Wed 2008-02-27 at 17:04h, Xavier Hanin wrote on ivy-user: > On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 4:59 PM, Niklas Matthies wrote: : > > How would this be different from a regular dependency with a "force" > > attribute? > > It's different only in concept: I don't like having to add a dependency > declaration when your module don't actually depend on something. Later you > can wonder why you have this dependency. That's why we have the conflicts > section in Ivy files. So I think this kind of dependency version overloading > deserves a new feature.
Okay, then how about adding an "override-only" attribute to dependency declarations? Or as a new value of the "transitive" attribute (i.e. transitive="override-only"). My feeling is that the feature has too much in common with real dependencies. (It actually *is* a dependency in the sense of demanding a particuar revision.) Every new feature added to "dependency" that is also applicable to the revision override features (like branches and extra attributes) would have to be carried over, and documented separately. Or else the feature set diverges over time. Also the name "dependencyManagement" is really, really bad. :) *Everything* in an ivy file is about dependendency management. At least make it "dependency-override" or something like that. [Note: I've never used Maven. Adopting non-descriptive names from Maven just to make Maven users feel more comfortable with a feature which (probably) does almost-but-not-exactly the same thing as in Maven feels like a really bad trade-off to me. ;)] -- Niklas Matthies
