[p2-dev] Dependency management synergies

[Oleg Gusakov <oleg.subscriptions@xxxxxxxxx>]

To introduce myself - I lead the Mercury project 
(http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Mercury, 
http://blogs.sonatype.com/people/author/oleg/), in which we try to 
clearly externalize Maven dependency management into a separate library, 
consumable by any client, not necessarily Maven.

And the nature of the project calls for generalization - after all we 
all are trying to solve the same problem - calculate dependency graph, 
given a set of requirements and a set of repositories, that can satisfy 
those requirements. It really does not matter whether we calculate java 
or OSGi dependencies because all boils down to creating a system of 
linear inequations and solving it, in both cases with SAT4J.

Why don't we try to unite our efforts and produce a library that all of 
can use: express our requirements in the unified intermediate language 
and process these statements with this library to produce a solution. 
Which could then be interpreted into either environment.

The mancoosi project - http://mancoosi.org as one of it's goals - states 
"Develop better algorithms and tools to plan upgrade paths based on 
various information sources about software packages and on optimization 
criteria". Why don't we try similar approach in the java world?

Please share what you think about it. Pascal ? :)

On the side issue: P2 uses an indirect way of creating those inequations 
- creates a file and then feeds it to solver. In Mercury we took a 
different approach and bypass file stage, feeding expressions directly 
to the solver, which is more efficient. If you'd like we can work 
together to fix that.

Kind Regards,
Oleg Gusakov