How do you store third party libraries in your source control?

Question

How do you store third party libraries that you use in your project in your source control?

When would you store binaries in your source control?

When would

Answer 1

Source control is called "source" control, because it is supposed to control sources..

In Java it's common pattern to use some version control system to store sources and other resources like configuration XML files or pictures, and than to use some dependency management tool like Apache Maven, which will store, download and manage your project's dependencies on 3rd party libraries. Then when you reinstall your OS, Maven can automatically download your dependecies from central repository (or your own private repositories as well) and store them in a local cache on your disk. You don't even have to know where the cache is :)

Maven can be also used with other languages and as far as I know plugins for .net and C/C++ are available, but I haven't used it with anything else than Java.

Answer 2

You don't need to store third party libraries in your source control repository. Those libraries (think of SDL, libcurl, etc.) should always be available on the web.
Just two raccomandations:

• make sure to state clearly in your code which version of the library you should compile against
• be sure that that specific version is always available on the web

Answer 3

Generally speaking, I would do roughly what has been prescribed by other users.

In the case of Subversion, and I admit I can't speak to the inclusion of the feature in the case of other systems, one can use an External to link in a repository maintained elsewhere. In a checkout/export, you'll get a full copy of the source including the updated code from that external repository all in one go.

This was particularly nice for me with PHP/JS development as there is no issue regarding storing binaries. I'd keep an external of the Zend Framework, Doctrine ORM, and jQuery all in a /lib/ folder of the project. Every update would give me a complete, updated copy of -all- the necessary files without any more work than adding that repository URL to an svn property.

Answer 4

Assuming you are using .Net:

I create a "Libraries" folder in my project and source control that contains any third party assemblies.

My solution then references those assemblies and my build process pulls that folder down to our build server.

Any one pulling your code from source control should be able to compile it without having to hunt down references and assemblies.

Answer 5

Conceptually you need to store at least the binaries (and the headers if you do C/C++) That's usually the only way with third party libraries where you don't have the source.

If you have the source you can opt to store the source and build the third party libraries in your build process.

Answer 6

How do you store third party libraries that you use in your project in your source control?

As binary or source or both. Depends on the library.

When would you store binaries in your source control?

A third party library for which we don't have the source or an internal library which we haven't made any changes to or the library is too huge to be built around.

When would you store the code in your source control?

Say, we use an internal library A but have made some bug fixed specific to product X. Then product X's depot will keep the source and build it.

Would you ever store both? In what situations would you do this?

Yes, all the latest binaries are stored in source control.

So the tree looks like this:

product

 |-- src

 |-- build

 |-- lib

       |- 3rdparty

       |- internal

...