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Message-ID: <3FA91BEB.6020504@latte.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:48:59 -0500
From: "Mark R. Diggory" <mdiggory@latte.harvard.edu>
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To: Jakarta Commons Developers List <commons-dev@jakarta.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [Math] common-math and bloated 3rd party libraries
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Gary Gregory wrote:

>>The need to support 1.3 is diminishing over time.  Java 1.4 is available
>>and runs well on all the major platforms I can think of.
> 
> 
> We should be careful with 1.3 vs. 1.4. From my POV, sadly, the majority of
> our customers run on a version WebSphere that only supports 1.3, which means
> that our product can't use 1.4. Very sad.
> 
Yes, my last comment about 1.3.1 was probably a little extreme.

> I take the following perspective: basement libraries like Commons should be
> reasonably conservative (look at Ant's SDK reqs) while the products one
> writes on top of them can be more aggressive. *I* make the decision to ask
> our customers to use 1.4 vs 1.3. I should not be forced to do that.
> 
> Gary

Unfortunately, this is the challenge as more and more functionally 
separate libraries get "glopped" into the j2sdk core without any release 
as separately downloadable components. Suns Logging should have been a 
logically separate component that one should be able to add onto 1.3.1

> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: David Graham [mailto:grahamdavid1980@yahoo.com]
>>Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 06:54
>>To: Jakarta Commons Developers List
>>Subject: RE: [Math] common-math and bloated 3rd party libraries
>>
>>
>>--- Eric Pugh <epugh@upstate.com> wrote:
>>
>>>This backlash against multiple commons jars is happening in a lot of
>>>places.
>>>However, I think it is a bit shortsighted.  If you are in a non server
>>>environment, I understand the problem, but in a server environment with
>>>lots
>>>of harddrive space, I don't.
>>
>>Agreed, especially because Jakarta's mission is to create *server* side
>>libraries.
>>
>>
>>>Additionally, since in a server app you
>>>are
>>>likely to need all thoses dependencies any way.  I think almost every
>>>app I
>>>work on has commons-lang, commons-loggin, and commons-collections
>>>included.
>>>And then depending on what else, commons-discovery and commons-beanutils
>>>show up all the time!
>>>
>>>By removing the dependency on commons-lang etc you also remove the
>>>ability
>>>to leverage their code when something better comes out.  You end up
>>>copying
>>>and pasting more and more out of all these projects in math.  And don't
>>>get
>>>the benefit of the testing, bugfixing etc they go through..
>>
>>In this case, it looks like commons-lang and commons-logging are only
>>needed because math doesn't use Java 1.4 as the base level.  Moving to
>>Java 1.4 has the advantage of providing exception chaining and logging in
>>the Java core and eliminates 2 jars.  Obviously, the disadvantage is that
>>1.3 users can't use commons-math.
>>
>>The need to support 1.3 is diminishing over time.  Java 1.4 is available
>>and runs well on all the major platforms I can think of.
>>
>>David
>>
>>
>>>Maybe a better approach is to try and figure out why things like
>>>commons-collections are so big, and should they be shrunk down or
>>>partioned?
>>>
>>>Eric
>>>
>>>
>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>From: Kasper Nielsen [mailto:news@kav.dk]
>>>>Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 2:55 PM
>>>>To: commons-dev@jakarta.apache.org
>>>>Subject: [Math] common-math and bloated 3rd party libraries
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hi gang,
>>>>
>>>>I love commons-math, one problem though!
>>>>
>>>>lets take a look at the dependecies
>>>>
>>>>common-lang: 189 kb
>>>>commons-beanutils: 116 kb
>>>>commons-collections-SNAPSHOT.jar 463
>>>>commons-discovery 70 kb
>>>>commons-logging-1.0.3.jar 31 kb kb
>>>>
>>>>Thats 850 kb!!! of 3rd party libraries that are only used in
>>>>a few places.
>>>>So to calculate a simple mean I need to include around 6 jars
>>>>(including
>>>>commons-math)
>>>>
>>>>So lets get the list down a bit.
>>>>
>>>>* Commons-lang
>>>>Getting rid of Commons-lang is pretty easy since it is only
>>>>used in one
>>>>place: MathException
>>>>Solution : Let MathException extend Exception instead of
>>>>NestableException. There aren't really anywhere we use the ability to
>>>>nest Exceptions inside other Exceptions in commons-math.
>>>>
>>>>* Commons-collections
>>>>Getting rid of commons-collections is also pretty easy
>>>>Solution: Getting a copy of HashBag (and the Testcase) and put into
>>>>math.util (no need to copy the interface)
>>>>
>>>>now we got rid of ~ 650 kb in around 2 minutes, 3 jars left,
>>>>this is a
>>>>fun game!!
>>>>
>>>>* Commons-Beanutils
>>>>Okay the transformers are nice but come on how many people
>>>>are going to
>>>>use them?
>>>>Solution: put them into a new small library:
>>>>commons-math-transformers.jar
>>>>
>>>>** Commons-Discovery
>>>>KISS keep it simple stupid, who on earth is going to provide
>>>>there own
>>>>UnivariateRealSolverFactory??
>>>>and for those few people that need it... I think they are
>>>>smart enough
>>>>to do figure it out themself.
>>>>Solution: remove it (or do something like we do for commons-logging)
>>>>
>>>>** Commons-logging
>>>>Lastly commons-logging...
>>>>I would think returning NaN is enough, but okay if people
>>>>insist we can
>>>>do something like (pseudo code)
>>>>
>>>>public class logutil
>>>>    static Method logMethod;
>>>>     static {
>>>>         try
>>>>         {
>>>>             Class clazz = Class.forName("commons.LogFactory");
>>>>             logMethod = clazz.getMethod("error");
>>>>         }
>>>>         catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {}
>>>>     }
>>>>     public static logError(String msg, Throwable t)
>>>>     {
>>>>         if (logMethod!=null)
>>>>         {
>>>>             logMethod.invoke(msg + t);
>>>>         }
>>>>     }
>>>>}
>>>>
>>>>and whoops we have now gotten rid of all the libraries, and
>>>>we have easy
>>>>embeddable little commons math jar.
>>>>
>>>>regards
>>>>   Kasper
>>>>
>>>>--------
>>>>Kasper Nielsen
>>>>kaspern at apache.org
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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> 
> 

-- 
Mark Diggory
Software Developer
Harvard MIT Data Center
http://www.hmdc.harvard.edu


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