[ImageJ-devel] API Extensibiliy

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, Grant B. Harris wrote:

> I posted a page concerning the design of extensible APIs using the
> NetBeans Lookup API, if anyone is interested.

Just one word of caution: dependency hell is something very real, and it 
is very, very hard to get out of it. One project I used to participate in 
basically stalled because the only guy who knew all the technical details 
incurred by the many, many libraries (which had to be cutting edge, mind 
you, a current Ubuntu package would not do) went away.

Maybe it would be better to state what functionality you need, and in many 
cases I guarantee that you can provide a simple solution without depending 
on a 3rd party library.

Also do not underestimate the impact of starting to include libraries that 
are half the size of ij.jar itself. In no time you get an application that 
is huge, just like Fiji, and growing.

If you are in desperate need of some emails complaining about the size of 
your application, I can forward you some.

Just a word of caution (but a serious one),
Dscho