Maven Extension Idea: iJar support

[Farid Zakaria]

I was combing through Bazel <https://bazel.build> (google's build tool) and
found a concept called iJar
<https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/tree/master/third_party/ijar>
iJar is basically a stripped out version of the Jar removing everything but
the public method signatures (very stripped out byte code jar).

Their build tool uses iJars in determining if upstream dependencies can be
skipped to be rebuilt. The idea being: if the interface (iJar) of the
current project hasn't changed (SHA), there's no need to rebuild upstream
dependencies since any possible method they'd have used did not change.

My guess is this would be a good way to speed up "-amd"
(also-make-dependents) by quickly stopping the build based on the iJar.

Could this be done as a maven extension?

Farid Zakaria

Advice or examples on using aether

[Farid Zakaria]

Hello!

I'm seeking to use aether (not through Maven plugin) to collect the
transitive closure given a top level `pom.xml`

(I'd like the version resolution strategy to mimic however maven does it
for transitive dependencies)

I see simple examples online that show that much however where I am stumped
are I need additional information:

- the plugins (used by the top level pom.xml)
- the .pom files for each dependency

I'm trying to collect the remote repository information necessary to
reconstruct a local repo for a separate program.

Thanks in advance for your help. 

Fetching checksums + remote repository URL

[Farid Zakaria]

Hello!

Wouldn't mind a bit of help or maybe some advice to the right direction.

I'm trying to leverage the *Aether* API to calculate when given a *pom.xml* the
transitive closure for the project and spit out:
1. the remote repository URI to the artifact resolved
2. the checksum of the artifact

Seems like I can figure out how I can get the transitive closure for a
project, but figuring out the remote repository URI it was resolved from
& the checksum is troublesome.

Thanks!
Farid Zakaria