Sebastian Krysmanski wrote on 09/11/2009 04:16 AM:
So the tradeoff is:
* without Ivy: slower initial checkout; but easier to use (works out of the
box) and easier to manage (simply place every necessary library in the VCS
repository)
* with Ivy: faster initial checkout; but not as easy to use (need to run Ivy
at least once; need to run Ivy every time the dependencies' versions change)
and more "difficult" to manage (it's prudent to setup a private repository
which must be maintained/managed in some way)
I wouldn't really agree with this summary, but YMMV. Most people on
this list have come to find Ivy because of the issues they faced with
their previous build systems. Since you aren't seeing issues right
now, you are unlikely to find the learning curve of Ivy worthwhile.
One thing that I haven't seen discussed, however, in this thread, is
synchronization of dependencies between build (Ant) and devlopment
(Eclipse). Before Ivy, we had a terrible time keeping classpaths in
sync. We'd have to update build scripts to check for the presence of
required jars, and also add the jars to the Eclipse project. The
latter task was frequently done haphazardly by junior developers in a
way that was specific to their own environment. The result was that a
developer checking out a project for the first time had some work to
do getting the classpath correct to be able to compile the project
within Eclipse (the build system was in better shape, since Continuous
Integration ensured the classpath was OK -- plus Ant has filesets).
With the IvyDE plugin, this is hugely improved. All dependencies are
managed in the ivy.xml, which provides the classpath for both the
build system and the IDE.
BTW, with regards to what you see as a headache (maintaining an Ivy
repository or relying on the availability of a thirdparty repo), you
may want to consider the IvySvn resolver, which stores your
"repository" in SVN for you, not unlike the way you do it today --
except with extra metadata to improve indirect dependency resolution.
Thanks,
---
Kirby Files
Software Architect
Masergy Communications
[email protected]
