Kyle,
While I appreciate the magnitude of the R&D on WAS/VAJ, I also think IBM has
been the worst offender in adopting and conforming to standards. Issues such
as the one you raise below could have been minimized by having dependency
documents, or architecting the system in a more self-contained manner, such
that only a specific sub-system of WAS needs version x of xerces, or there
is a very well-documeted reason for needing a different version.
I don't expect IBM to run and update WAS/VAJ for every nightly CVS release
of things like Tomcat, but I do expect that a serious effort would be made
to integrate the latest stable/release build when IBM releases an update.
Look at the mess this Tomcat fiasco made, along with things like
JAXP/Xerces. And if provisions can't be made to update the install, at the
*very* least, there should be some sort of instruction for those that want
to run on stable versions.
Anyways, I know you have nothing to do with this, but if you want to pass it
on, that's fine by me.
--
Dan Miser
http://www.distribucon.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kyle Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 1:28 PM
Subject: RE: WebSphere, Jasper and Struts 1.0b3
> I can't speak officially for IBM on this, but the short answer is testing.
> Building an application server is an enormous undertaking. The
application
> servers themselves are some of the biggest Java applications on the
planet.
> We're easily talking about close to a million lines of code. As such they
> have enormous test suites and enormous testing requirements -- especially
> since everyone wants the application servers to work "just right" for
THEIR
> apps. All this testing entails manpower requirements, and even a company
> as big as IBM can only afford to spend so much on testing...
>
> Every change to a core feature (like the JSP compiler) has ramifications
> all the way up and down the product. For instance, suppose that this
> particular build of Jasper requires a particular build of Xerces -- well,
> multiple other parts of the system depended on the LAST build of Xerces,
> and the new build just changes one or two minor things... you get the
> picture. This is the reason why these decisions aren't made lightly, and
> only come at fixed intervals.
