Provide as single jar file for the dagger-compiler

[scharf]

The Readme.md says:

Developer snapshots are available from Sonatype's snapshot repository, and are built on a clean build of the GitHub project's master branch.

I am using dagger without maven or gradle. For the compiler, the dagger dependency seems to have exploded since version 2.0. When I use maven I see the following dependencies (using mvn install dependency:copy-dependencies and looking at target/dependency directory):

animal-sniffer-annotations-1.14.jar
checker-compat-qual-2.3.0.jar
dagger-2.14.1.jar
dagger-compiler-2.14.1.jar
dagger-producers-2.14.1.jar
dagger-spi-2.14.1.jar
error_prone_annotations-2.0.18.jar
google-java-format-1.4.jar
guava-23.3-jre.jar
j2objc-annotations-1.1.jar
javac-shaded-9-dev-r4023-3.jar
javapoet-1.8.0.jar
javax.inject-1.jar
jsr250-api-1.0.jar
jsr305-1.3.9.jar

For the runtime, dagger-2.14.1.jar and javax.inject-1.jar seem to be sufficient. For the compiler there are lots of dependencies. This is a pain to download and figure out manually.

However, for dagger-2.0 the situation was much simpler:

dagger-2.0.jar
dagger-compiler-2.0.jar
dagger-producers-2.0-beta.jar
guava-18.0.jar
javax.inject-1.jar

I think there should be a one-stop solution to download the compiler and its dependencies as a single file.

[ronshapiro]

Dagger is never intended to be run in a standalone mode (like, say google-java-format is, which does have a fat jar), and having a single jar is asking for confusing integration issues with other libraries' versions. That's why build systems exist (to help you with that).

I'm not sure how mvn install dependency:copy-dependencies works, but some of these aren't necessary. I think animal-sniffer-annotations-1.14.jar is a build-time dependency of Guava. I think j2objc-annotations can be omitted as well but I'm not positive.

If you really would like to have a fat jar, you can build a _deploy.jar of the compiler artifact using bazel, but it's not something we'd like to promote.

[scharf]

That's why build systems exist (to help you with that).

Yes! Many build systems distinguish between the build tools and the artifacts they build.

If I may want to use make (one of the oldest build systems), then I want to have the tools, like the dagger-compiler to be installed somewhere else than the application that I build. The application itself has a small runtime dependency (dagger-2.14.1.jar plus javax.inject`). Ideally, the dagger compiler is a single file that I can execute and simply upgrade.

If I want to use the javac then the -processorpath gets pretty long with the 16 dependencies that the dagger-compiler-2.14 needs.

Or when I want to use eclipse to do the dependency injection, I have to somehow fetch all those dependencies and add them in the preferences:

All of this is very annoying, because upgrading dagger (in this context) becomes complicated and I see no reason why the dagger compiler cannot be a single easy to use jar....

With dagger-2.9, the compiler dependencies have been simple (if I exclude the runtime dependencies javax.inject and dagger) :

dagger-compiler-2.8.jar
dagger-producers-2.8.jar
guava-20.0-rc1.jar

dagger-2.10 till dagger-2.13 had 8 dependencies:

auto-common-0.8.jar
dagger-compiler-2.10.jar
dagger-producers-2.10.jar
google-java-format-1.3.jar
guava-21.0-rc1.jar
javac-9-dev-r3297-1-shaded.jar
javapoet-1.7.0.jar
jsr305-3.0.1.jar

In dagger-2.14 the list gets more bloated: it now depends on 16 jar files:

animal-sniffer-annotations-1.14.jar
checker-compat-qual-2.3.0.jar
dagger-compiler-2.14.jar
dagger-producers-2.14.jar
dagger-spi-2.14.jar
error_prone_annotations-2.0.18.jar
google-java-format-1.4.jar
guava-23.3-jre.jar
j2objc-annotations-1.1.jar
javac-shaded-9-dev-r4023-3.jar
javapoet-1.8.0.jar
jsr250-api-1.0.jar
jsr305-1.3.9.jar

The original 3 files for the dagger-compiler were quite manageable, but in my opinion, the 16 files and growing are not acceptable anymore.