POI Library Dependencies

[Sarah-17]

Hi,

Apologies if I missed this... but is there any documentation anywhere about
POI's various library dependencies?

I see the various jar files in the distribution, but it isn't clear to me
whether they're all needed, or whether some only apply to particular
features or subsets of POI. Can I leave out some of the files?

I'm trying to integrate POI into our custom in-house build environment, and
it isn't immediately obvious which jars need to be included OR which
jars/versions need to be omitted because we're already including them to
satisfy a preexisting dependency in either our code, or one of the other
libraries we include. And in some cases our existing libraries are either
older or newer than the ones in POI, so I'm not sure whether to
upgrade/downgrade what we have, or whether or not POI *requires* the
older/newer version.

And, having poked around a bit, I can't find appropriate documentation on
this topic on the POI website. Am I just missing it?

I guess it's also worth pointing out that I personally haven't used POI in
many years (2.5.1 or earlier)... but my boss needs to put some little app
together using POI 3.5, and I'm responsible for maintenance of the build
system... oh, and FYI, we'll be integrating it into our servlet environment
and won't need to build POI from source.

Thanks for any guidance.

Sarah Kelley

[Nick Burch]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009, Sarah wrote:
> Apologies if I missed this... but is there any documentation anywhere
> about POI's various library dependencies?

I'm not sure there is that much, no. I think David has put it on his list
of things to do when updating the site though!

(We track the license / attribution stuff quite carefully, see NOTICE, but
that's the main thing)

> I see the various jar files in the distribution, but it isn't clear to
> me whether they're all needed, or whether some only apply to particular
> features or subsets of POI. Can I leave out some of the files?

Generally, everything in /lib/ is needed no matter what you're doing,
though you can skip junit if you don't want to run the tests

Everything in /ooxml-lib/ is needed if you want to work with the ooxml
files (.xlsx, .docx, .pptx). If you only want to use the older ole2 file
formats, you can skip these

> And in some cases our existing libraries are either older or newer than
> the ones in POI, so I'm not sure whether to upgrade/downgrade what we
> have, or whether or not POI *requires* the older/newer version.

Generally that's a question you'll need to ask of the libraries
themselves. They should generally say how well applications compiled
against them cope with older/newer versions. For example, I know that
XmlBeans say that you should generally be fine to run against a newer
runtime than you did the compiling with, but not an older one. Most
libraries should have something similar to saw

Nick

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[David Fisher]

Hi Nick,

>> Apologies if I missed this... but is there any documentation  
>> anywhere about POI's various library dependencies?
>
> I'm not sure there is that much, no. I think David has put it on his  
> list of things to do when updating the site though!

The components are currently listed on the bottom of the home page. I  
plan a new Components page and have now added a good description of  
the Run / Compile time dependencies to my to do list.

> (We track the license / attribution stuff quite carefully, see  
> NOTICE, but that's the main thing)

I plan to link to this from a couple of obvious places, and the  
components page is one.

>> I see the various jar files in the distribution, but it isn't clear  
>> to me whether they're all needed, or whether some only apply to  
>> particular features or subsets of POI. Can I leave out some of the  
>> files?
>
> Generally, everything in /lib/ is needed no matter what you're  
> doing, though you can skip junit if you don't want to run the tests
>
> Everything in /ooxml-lib/ is needed if you want to work with the  
> ooxml files (.xlsx, .docx, .pptx). If you only want to use the older  
> ole2 file formats, you can skip these

Exactly.

>> And in some cases our existing libraries are either older or newer  
>> than the ones in POI, so I'm not sure whether to upgrade/downgrade  
>> what we have, or whether or not POI *requires* the older/newer  
>> version.
>
> Generally that's a question you'll need to ask of the libraries  
> themselves. They should generally say how well applications compiled  
> against them cope with older/newer versions. For example, I know  
> that XmlBeans say that you should generally be fine to run against a  
> newer runtime than you did the compiling with, but not an older one.  
> Most libraries should have something similar to saw

The rewritten "How to Build" page more carefully describes the Ant,  
JUnit and Forrest build dependencies and the versions. Ant is always  
required and we have checked out against the latest version 1.7.1, but  
the build ought to work with earlier versions - probably 1.6 and up.  
JUnit requirements are always described as get the latest. You only  
need JUnit if you are building the "test" or "dist" targets. Forrest  
requires the very old version 0.5 and is only needed for "docs" and  
"dist" targets. When we have the new documentation released - there  
will be links to the correct pages.

Regards,
Dave




>
> Nick
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