[tools-pmc] Comments re dependency on BCEL

[Stephan Herrmann <stephan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear PMC,

Here's some background on CQ 3805 (use of BCEL from Orbit), 
just so to keep you informed:


Originally, Object Teams maintained its own version of BCEL (branched
of bcel 4.4.1, i.e.: pre-apache times). 

I contacted Andy Clement about their usage of BCEL for AspectJ and 
learned two things:
 * the original BCEL project at apache is not active enough to accept 
   patches from us
 * his version of BCEL deviates so much from the original that migrating
   to his version would be very difficult.
While technically we share many experiences in using and patching BCEL
direct re-use/cooperation did not look promising.

At that point I invested efforts at migrating to a stock BCEL 5.2.
To my own surprise after some work it all worked out fine, so we no longer
need to maintain a modified BCEL but we'll be happy with reusing it
from Orbit, not even need to repackage or anything.



Only one little question remains that I already asked Sharon, but maybe 
you have a quick answer:

For batch use outside the IDE users will need to download three things:
- Object Teams batch compiler (just like JDT's)
- Object Teams runtime (one jar)
- org.apache.bcel_5.2.0.jar
What's the recommended way for distributing such things? Just zip all
three jars into one downloadable archive? Would such packaging require
additional approval?

regards,
Stephan