The
thread https://coderanch.com/t/393831/java/java/cann-find-jar-files-jar in this forum got me thinking about the whole classpath jar file mess. The situation is lousy: in
an application of any size it is easy to end up with
a lib full of jars and then get into versioning hell. I saw a slide at a Colorado Software Summit conference and the speaker said this was a "valuable" slide. It was a list of about 20 jars. Why was it valuable? Because next to each jar was the correct version number to get them to work together.
I have xerces.jar. Which xerces.jar? How do I keep track? My servers' CVS is not that happy with binary versioning, I have quota issues, and I'm not that interested in the old versions, anyway. I heard that the
Maven project was working on some sort of way of handling this, but I haven't heard anything about it. I heard Martin Fowler say that the open source community saved
Java builds with Ant and perhaps they can save the
Java library mess, too. I for one will be tickled pink.