The joys of open source
Aug. 25th, 2008 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurI'm finally getting started on the LiveJournal integration, now that CommYou's IM capabilities are beginning to hum fairly nicely. First step is making OpenID work.
In theory, this is straightforward: as so often, there's already a fairly complete-looking Java library for OpenID out there, under an Apache License that I can work with. So I installed that Friday, set things up very similarly to the example code -- and not only does it not work, it fails really badly and strangely.
Fortunately, after tearing my hair out for a few hours, I came across a message from Thursday on the related Google Group, from someone else who is about two days ahead of me on the hair-pulling. This got a response of, essentially, "Oh, yeah, the sample code in the release is totally broken. Go get the current version from SVN instead."
On the one hand, I appreciate the prompt response, and I have reasonable hope that it will get me past my mysteries. OTOH, I do, once again, find myself longing slightly for libraries that come from places with persnickety QA departments. Say what you will about Microsoft (and heaven knows I can tell my share of MS horror stories), I don't think I've ever gotten anything quite *that* broken from them. Open source is lovely, and usually way ahead of the curve in terms of functionality, but the implied "use at your own risk" is biting me on the ass fairly often on this project...
In theory, this is straightforward: as so often, there's already a fairly complete-looking Java library for OpenID out there, under an Apache License that I can work with. So I installed that Friday, set things up very similarly to the example code -- and not only does it not work, it fails really badly and strangely.
Fortunately, after tearing my hair out for a few hours, I came across a message from Thursday on the related Google Group, from someone else who is about two days ahead of me on the hair-pulling. This got a response of, essentially, "Oh, yeah, the sample code in the release is totally broken. Go get the current version from SVN instead."
On the one hand, I appreciate the prompt response, and I have reasonable hope that it will get me past my mysteries. OTOH, I do, once again, find myself longing slightly for libraries that come from places with persnickety QA departments. Say what you will about Microsoft (and heaven knows I can tell my share of MS horror stories), I don't think I've ever gotten anything quite *that* broken from them. Open source is lovely, and usually way ahead of the curve in terms of functionality, but the implied "use at your own risk" is biting me on the ass fairly often on this project...