Generic 3rd Party DotNet Libraries not appropriately handled
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Key: MNG-2369
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2369
Project: Maven 2
Type: Improvement
Components: Sandbox
Environment: Windows XP
Reporter: James Carpenter
The csharp plugins work great when using .Net dependencies built with the
csharp plugins, but don't work in the general case.
Problem Statement:
(Note: As a Java developer, I might mess this up a bit.)
A .NET assembly contains a manifest which lists the assemblies it depends upon.
In addition to checking digital signatures for public assemblies, the
classloader (whatever MS calls it) expects the filenames of the dependencies to
match that described in the manifest. The problem is the maven repository
structure imposes a particular naming convention upon the artifacts placed
within it. So you can't just take a third party dll change its name to fit
into the maven repo artifact naming convention and create an associated POM.
Artifacts built by maven using the csharp plugins match the maven repo artifact
naming conventions and the assembly manifests contain dependencies whose names
are consistent with the maven repo artifact naming conventions.
Tatical Solution:
The nasty tatical solution I am currently using, is to simple refer to any 3rd
party dlls as system dependencies. (<scope>system</scope>)
Potential Strategic Solution:
I believe the solution is to create another maven artifact type to support 3rd
party dlls. The artifact actually stored in the maven repo should be an
archieve of some sort (jar, zip, etc.). During the process-resources (some
phase prior to compilation, might need custom lifecycle) phase these 3rd party
dependencies would be downloaded by the ArtifactResolver and unarchieved in
some directory structure which maintains the versioning through directory
naming, but not by file name. The dll filename would be the same as the
original name of the 3rd party dll (most likely implementation choice is simply
to let the archieve maintain the original name).
When maven builds the classpath, any artifact of this new type would be
represented in the classpath as the path to the unarchieved dll. (The current
csharp compiler plugin sees these as the path to the local repo.)
I believe, it will actually be necessary to produce two new artifact types.
One will be used for "managed" dependencies and another for native "unmanaged"
dependencies. This distinction is important because the csc (C# compiler) only
wants to know about "managed" dependencies. (See as /resource arguments to csc
compiler. Refer to plexus csharp compiler code for details.)
I'm not sure my proposed solution is 100% accurate, as I still don't know the
maven internals that well, but I think its close.
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