Switch to original Apache Ivy

[twogee]

Would you consider switching to Apache Ivy if we would graft easyant-integration, 2.3.x-sbt and 2.4.x-sbt branches?

[eed3si9n]

Are you suggesting that sbt uses Apache Ivy repository (https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ant/ivy/core/) and continue the unofficial fork? Is the motivation to avoid duplication of development (for example to adopt to JDK 9/10)?

[twogee]

The fork appeared because EasyAnt project has created a clone of Ivy SVN repo in GitHub. Meanwhile, Ant project (which Ivy is a part of) converted to Git (https://git.apache.org/ant-ivy.git/) a couple of years ago. All Apache Git repos are cloned at GitHub, inclusive Ivy (https://github.com/apache/ant-ivy). Since Ant project has been discussing a new release of Ivy (tentatively called 2.5.0), maybe there's a chance to merge the development history. We would appreciate your input choosing the baseline for the next release. The current plan is to release 2.5.0 for Java 7 and target Java 8 for next release in order to align the development with Ant.

[eed3si9n]

sbt uses a fork off of 2.3.x apache/ant-ivy@a83df76, which we call 2.3.x-sbt.
In sbt 1.x, library management feature is modularized in librarymanagement repo (LM API) - https://github.com/sbt/librarymanagement/blob/v1.1.3/project/Dependencies.scala#L43
At the time when I started patching 2.3.x in 2014 I tried 2.4.x, but it wasn't quite stable. There's been a handful of people interested in 2.4.x (sbt/sbt#1920, sbt/sbt#3976) but 2.3.x has been working mostly ok.

I should probably note that there are overwhelming number of people who want to switch the library management implementation away from Ivy, and migrate to Scala based engine called Coursier. sbt/sbt#2997 for example has 172 likes atm. Since Coursier doesn't implement all features of Ivy, we will likely continue to depend on Ivy for a long time, but I as an sbt maintainer would like Ivy to stay as stable LM API implementation; and Coursier implementation can do the cooler things.

As per Java is concerned. I am ok with supporting Java 7 as the minimum version, but it's essential that we support Java versions 10 and 11.

[twogee]

Thanks for the pointer. I am aware of Coursier, and I'm fine with sbt moving to pure Scala. My intent was to understand whether it would make sense to add sbt branch to Apache Ivy in order to make it easier to port improvements.

[eed3si9n]

My intent was to understand whether it would make sense to add sbt branch to Apache Ivy in order to make it easier to port improvements.

Yes, I think that makes sense.