Netty buffer classes

[timfox]

Currently we use a forked copy of some older Netty buffer classes when we need to use buffers internally but don't want a runtime netty dependency.

There are some problems with this approach:

1) This buffers get quickly out of date and don't have any new performance enhancements/bug fixes done to the versions in netty

2) When copying to/from real netty buffers this involves extra copying.

I'm proposing we remove these forked classes and just use the real netty buffers.

The down side of this means that core will have a runtime depency on the netty jar.

wdyt?

[ataylor]

I dont think its a huge biggy, the netty jar isnt that big. Alternatively is there any way we could just pull out the classes we need and add them to the core jar?

[timfox]

"ataylor" wrote:
Alternatively is there any way we could just pull out the classes we need and add them to the core jar?

That's what we currently do, and what I'm suggesting we don't do.

[ataylor]

extract them out of the netty jar at build time i mean.

[timfox]

Ok, I see what you mean

[apwalker]

IMHO in your core jar I wouldn't include any external dependencies. You could provide a classpath entry in the MANIFEST file which references all required dependencies. This is the way the jbossall-client.jar now works in JBoss 5. Also having a maven/ivy file that describes exactly what your dependencies are is very useful since you can describe both required and optional dependencies