Managing Multiple Dependencies

Ivy

• Ant/Java based dependency management tool
• Flexible back end artifact repository

Maven

• Large build/dependency/project managment tool
• Does much more than dependency management, which can make it overkill if that's all you want

Fig

• Can be found on github
• Small tool for managing dependencies
• Able to manage classpath, library path, etc for executable being managed
• Matt Foemmel (original co-author of Continuous Integration paper)/Chris Read

Gradle

• Build tool
• Build in dependency management (uses Ivy internally)

Versioning/Configuration management

• Have a good policy of how to introduce api changes
• Dependencies should always compile against you
• Chris: there doesn't seem to be any tool that can automatically prevent api breaking changes

Tom D question:

• Module A has some production code, as well as some unit tests, integration tests and scenario tests.
• If there are some useful *testing* utilities, should they be packaged for use externally
• Chris R: generally OK, Consider the test code as a different target environment (e.g. prod vs test)

Is this a design smell?

• module B depends on test code from module A, therefore get module A to publish separate test utility artifact
• comment: break out the test utility into its own module
• however, this will cause a cyclic dependency between B and A test utils

Question:

• How to express dependencies of modules with different languages/artefact types?
• Dependency information should be independent of any specific CI system
• Ivy or Fig look like good candidates for these problems