Hello fellow Ivy users, I'd like to announce a new little project I've started, and ask for your feedback (and help, if interested).
This project has two basic parts... 1. *Builder Resolver*<http://ivyroundup.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/files/builder.html>: a new Ivy resolver that accesses ivy files and "build instructions" from an online "builder" repository. "Builder" repositories contain ivy.xml files but no artifacts. To get the artifacts, the build instructions are downloaded from the repository and executed locally. These instructions specify additional resource(s) to download and how to build the artifacts from them, for example, by downloading a project's original distribution archive directly from their web site and extracting the desired artifacts. 2. *Ivy RoundUp Repository* <http://ivyroundup.googlecode.com/>: an online, open-source community "Builder" repository for all Ivy users. Please click the links for more info and documentation. I am lobbying to get the builder resolver added into Ivy itself; right now it's still in patch form (you can download a pre-built ivy.jar from the project website). Some motivations for starting this project: 1. Ivyrep is no longer maintained, but we need a decent community Ivy repository that everyone can share 2. Hosting hundreds of large files that are just copies of the same files available elsewhere is expensive and redundant, so let's avoid doing that 3. 99% of projects out there do not publish ivy.xml files, so we need a community project that focuses on developing and maintaining them 4. To get the most out of Ivy, there needs to be a consistent set of guidelines for creating ivy.xml files: how to choose organization names, philosophy for defining configurations, etc. A community project supported by Ivy users can provide this. What I want to do is gauge interest in this idea and ask for any volunteers who'd like to start adding and maintaining meta-data for their favorite projects. The Ivy RoundUp repository is online now, though only as a proof-of-concept (it only contains a few modules so far). Take a look and you should be able to get the general idea: http://ivyroundup.googlecode.com/ In the worst case, if nobody else is interested, I will just use this for myself -- it's already working better than what I was doing (i.e., checking in giant ZIP files into Subversion and creating a project for every one to publish into our private Ivy repository), and in any case the work of setting it up is already done. Note also anyone could create their own private builder repository using this project as well. In the best case, we'll put together a piece of infrastructure that all Ivy users can really benefit from. Let me know what you think. Thanks, -Archie -- Archie L. Cobbs
