We're in the last phases of refactoring out the various GWT modules from the gwt-user.jar each into their own github.com/gwtproject/ repositories and jars, so they can be released separately and managed directly on github rather than only through gerrit. These will be new jars, each with a org.gwtproject.* groupId, and with package structure also following org.gwtproject.*. As of their first version they are built and tested to be compatible with both GWT 2.9 and also J2CL, and will be as close to drop-in replacements for their original classes as possible, save for GWT.create(...) calls and changing package structure in your imports.
With this change nearly complete, Google has requested that the main GWT release no longer come from from them - as long as the groupId includes com.google, the release to maven central or sonatype snapshots can only be initiated by a Googler. When this change is completed, we would not need the CLA any longer, nor would the compiler need to be hosted on gerrit (though I assume that we would be welcome to continue there?). Google has indicated that we do not need to change package structures within these jars, and just releasing them on their own groupId is sufficient. The primary complication this will add is for large, long-lived projects, using multiple parts of the GWT ecosystem: whereas adding a new dependency to a tree with a conflicting version is expected and handled (maven will ensure only one groupId+artifactId is present on the classpath, selecting the "nearest" version to your project in the tree, while gradle will pick the "highest" version, and ivy is configurable), adding a new dependency with a different _groupId_ will retain both classpath entries, which can clearly cause conflicts. Historically, we have seen issues with this kind of conflict, mostly between gwt-dev and gwt-user, but this change is likely to cause two conflicting versions of gwt-dev or two versions of gwt-user, in addition to conflicting gwt-dev/gwt-user. One proposed solution is that we just switch from GWT 2.9 being com.google.gwt to GWT 2.10 being org.gwtproject. Resolution for this would occur within each project that uses GWT - if you deliberately stay with com.google.gwt, any dependency that gets an update could need an explicit exclusion added to it to prevent it from bringing in any org.gwtproject dependencies. Any missed exclusion on a dependency could result in familiar mixed-classpath errors like we sometimes see when gwt-user and gwt-dev disagree, though instead of mitigating by requiring that projects list both of these artifacts, every single dependency would need to apply exclusions to it. Another solution could be to release 2.9.0 again under the new groupId, and likewise provide the next several releases under both groupIds. This would have the advantage of allowing a project to list both groupIds to manage all dependencies to the same version, but does require that Google continue to publish releases for the duration of some transition period. A similar solution that I can see would be to use the "relocation" feature in maven, though I've rarely seen it used, and there is apparently some ongoing discussion as to whether it should be used. This would enable Google to release a new version which only tells Maven to switch to the org.gwtproject release instead - downstream projects and libraries would manage this in the same way as the second solution. Depending on the specifics, Google might release a matching trivial relocation "release" for each org.gwtproject release for a transition period, or might just release one time and be done. More details on the feature: https://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-relocation.html Are there other technical considerations I'm missing as to how this might be achieved in the most painless way possible? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GWT Contributors" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-web-toolkit-contributors+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-web-toolkit-contributors/81784738-15e9-49f8-bc49-d9a292cef3b5o%40googlegroups.com.
