Simple dependency management, Impala style

I've been spending a bit of time working on a simple dependency management system for Impala. You're probably asking: why don't you just use something like Maven or Ivy? Aren't they supposed to be doing that job for you?

Well, the problem is that I've decided I don't want transitive dependency management. What I do want is a simple way for users of the project (including myself, of course) can easily find and download the dependencies they do need. In a funny way, Maven does come to the rescue. It defines a standard format for repository jar entries, which goes like this:

[base url]/[organisation name]/artifact name]/[version]/[artifact name]-[version].jar

For example, I can hold of the Spring framework jar into using the URL
http://ibiblio.org/pub/packages/maven2/org/springframework/spring/2.0.6/spring-2.0.6.jar

Thankfully, Maven also defines a standard format for source jars.

[base url]/[organisation name]/artifact name]/[version]/[artifact name]-[version]-sources.jar

Okay, so I don't want transitive dependencies, then what do I want?

• an easy reliable way to get hold of dependencies without having to go to each and every individual project web sites
• source jars that match the downloaded binaries, so that I can easily attach source for debugging
• a simple way of saying where the downloaded files should go

Impala uses the concept of a project-specific repository. A project specific repository will have a simple structure consisting of parent folders and subfolders as shown below:



Now, all I need is a simple mechanism which says how individual artifacts are added to this repository. The mechanism Impala uses is a simple text file, which has entries such as below:

main from commons-logging:commons-logging:1.1
main from commons-io:commons-io:1.3
main from log4j:log4j:1.2.13
main from org.springframework:spring:2.0.6 source=true
main from cglib:cglib-nodep:2.1_3
test from junit:junit:3.8.1
test from org.easymock:easymock:2.2
test from org.easymock:easymockclassextension:2.2

For each artifact, I say optionally whether I want to include source (overriding whatever the default setting happens to be).

I still need to do the work of figuring out what the dependencies are, but once I've got there, life is pretty peachy. You get the best of both worlds - simplicity and control.

I still need to do some tweaks to get the mechanism fully ship shape, but it's basically working pretty well. Another feature is that you can specify multiple source locations, including your local Maven repository, so if the artifact you need happens to be lurking on your file system from a previous download, you don't need to waste time trying to get it from the net.