"Craig R. McClanahan" wrote: > > Internal references from one package to another (say, > org.apache.catalina.realm to org.apache.catalina.core) are much less > desireable. > ... > Is it appropriate to go through the exercise of identifying the > offending cases and defining proposed changes to implement them? > Yah, it's definitely time for that to happen. >
Currently, AuthenticatorBase depends on StandardContext. It's not some deep dependency. AuthenticatorBase just wants to set its debug level to be the same as its Context. There's an instanceof check before the cast, so AuthenticatorBase doesn't actually require that its parent be a StandardContext, but it does require that StandardContext exists. It produces a 'mystery dependency' that is invisible from the outside. I may be preaching to the converted, but mystery dependencies are bad. They make the code brittle and hard to understand. They lead to spaghetti. I reported the dependency as a bug (with a patch) and the bug was changed to a feature request. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. It's certainly a bug for me. There are a couple of ways to fix the problem: 1) Delete the offending code. Easiest, and in this case probably reasonable. You'll lose the debug-setting propagation, but you can always set that manually. It's for debugging so presumably you're messing with the settings any case. My patch did this, I'd like to see it applied. 2) Move setDebug() up to the Context or Container level. They all implement setDebug() anyway, right? And it doesn't break compatibility with old code. Med/long term, this would probably be a good solution. 3) Create a Debug interface. Pretty much everything in Catalina has set/getDebug() methods, not just Containers. But it's overkill. Each new class or interface adds conceptual overhead to the system. I don't think it's worth it. Whether you like the idea of something like MimimalTomcat or not, I suspect writing it will turn up some problems (and solutions) that will improve all of the Catalina code. While we're on the subject of interfaces, what is Context.findRoleMapping() for? I've got it stubbed out in MinimalTomcat, but I'd like to know what I'm stubbing out. It used to be used in HttpRequestBase.isUserInRole(), but the call was replaced by a call to Context.findSecurityRole(). -- Christopher St. John [EMAIL PROTECTED] DistribuTopia http://www.distributopia.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
