One thing I’ve always found frustrating is when a library I use is no longer maintained. Even looking at update history and community beforehand, I’ve run into the situation where I check back later to find that the version I’m using is the last version.
Generally this goes unnoticed until a few months have passed, or some bug/limitation has been found. I run into this fairly often when coding in Python, because my desire to upgrade to a new version of the interpreter can easily introduce problems in libraries that worked fine before. My question is: what is the best response to this situation?
-
Do you become the maintainer of the old library? Even if you’re only fixing the bugs you care about, this is still a lot of work. Especially if the library is large, complex, and has less-than-well-documented code (the case more often than not).
-
Do you switch to a different library (if there is one)? This is also a significant undertaking, with the potential to introduce new bugs, especially if the only alternatives approach the problem from a different angle. This can be true even if you had the foresight to write an abstraction layer for the old library’s functionality.
-
Do you roll your own? It probably ends up as less code than the old library, since you only write the parts you care about. It’s therefore easier to maintain in the future. But now you’ve wasted days/weeks/months to produce something that is probably less functional, and is guaranteed to introduce tons of new bugs.
I realize the answer depends on the specific case: the size of the library, whether source is available, how maintainable it is, how much of it your code uses, how deeply your code relies on it, etc. I’m looking for answers across a range of cases. What are your experiences with this problem?
Well, you’ve found one argument to lessen the number of external dependencies…
I’ve come across this in several Java projects I’ve audited; it seems people have a tendency to drop in a Jar found somewhere on the Web for the tiniest amount of reuse possible from it. The result is a mess of dependencies that ends up undermining the code base. I prefer to use external components sparingly.
It’s probably most useful to ask what you can do before. Make a point of evaluating the future lifetime of an external component before you start using it. Do some research on how large its developer community and its user community are. Also, prefer to use a component that has one or two ‘lesser’ alternatives which you could also use.
If there’s something you’re tempted to use, but it has only one or two people working on it and isn’t used much beyond their own project, then you should probably roll your own – or join forces with the maintainers of the component.