--- Earl Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On April 30, 2001 at 21:47, "Vincent Massol" wrote:
>
> > I chose option 2 although I would have preferred
> option 1. But I thought
> > that the cost of needing the log4j jar was going
> to add too much complexity
> > and that Cactus was already complex enough not to
> have to support this
> > additional complexity. Note that it is not *that*
> complex (it just means
> > having the log4j jar ready and adding an
> additional jar in the CLASSPATH)
> > but I have found that even having the correct jars
> in the classpath is not
> > something that easy for end users .... :)
>
> In the work I have done, the solution to this
> problem is to merge
> the necessary jar files together to avoid the
> dependency on CLASSPATH.
> The merging is not ideal for some applications, like
> applets, but
> works well for server-side, or stand-alone,
> applications. It makes
> distribution and installation easier.
Neat idea. The caveat is that log4j might also be used
by the application using Cactus or more generally
Commons. By "hiding" log4j as part of cactus.jar the
end user might be confused when her version of
log4j.jar is hidden by log4j classes included in
cactus.jar.
This is a classical dependency problem. Either you use
a library and depend on it, or don't use the library
and don't depend. I won't say more given my
involvement in log4j. It's up to you to decide whether
it makes sense for you to use log4j or any other
library in your project.
There are a number of people who have developed
libraries dependent on log4j. You might wish to ask
for their experiences on the log4j-user list.
> To do the merging, I wrote some classes that do the
> merging processing
> (using jar to do the work is inefficent and
> awkward). It attempts to
> preserve manifest information and supports selective
> inclusion and
> exclusion of classes; this allows one to merge only
> what is needed.
> If there is interest, I can make the source
> available.
This is quite a nice idea. I would be interested in
looking at the code. Regards, Ceki
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