Organizing Apex Classes under Namespace

Question

Is there any way in Salesforce to group apex classes under a package or namespace? Can we use managed package for internal organization purpose?

Answer 1

Well, you can use managed packages, but as Jeremy mentioned it doesn't really buy you much. Of course managed packages are essential for developing publicly listed apps to sell on the AppExchange. But internally it's really an org-wide problem since once you create a managed package with a prefix, everything that touches any other part of it gets stamped with the same namespace prefix, including all custom objects. And worse, you can't access code in a managed package from outside the managed package (which is actually the whole point of them in the first place).

Although it's not the prettiest solution, what I personally do is maintain numerous named orgs with different purposes, applications and utility classes. When I need a utility class in one org, say I'm building a new app destined for the AppExchange, I'll do an Eclipse Export/Import from the utility org in question. It definitely seems strange but having a library of orgs is the best way I've managed to keep track of everything and to manage "internal" organization. But the end result is really just a glorified copy-paste operation between arbitrary code stores.