Arguments for and against including 3rd-party libraries in version control?

user_2372835 0
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I've met quite a few people lately who says that 3rd party libraries doesn't belong in version control. These people haven't been able to explain to me why they shouldn't yet, so I hoped you guys could come to my rescue :)

Personally, I think that when I check the trunk of a project out, it should just work - No need to go to other sites to find libraries. More often than not, you'd end up with multiple versions of the same 3rd party lib for different developers then - and sometimes with incompatibility problems.

Is it so bad to have a libs folder up there, with "guarenteed-to-work" libraries you could reference?

version-control
12 Answers

No, it isn't a war crime to have third-party code in your repository, but I find that to upset my sense of aesthetics. Many people here seem to be of the opinion that it's good to have your whole developement team on the same version of these dependencies; I say it is a liability. You end up dependent on a specific version of that dependency, where it is a lot harder to use a different version later. I prefer a heterogenous development environment - it forces you to decouple your code from the specific versions of dependencies.

IMHO the right place to keep the dependencies is on your tape backups, and in your escrow deposit, if you have one. If your specific project requires it (and projects are not all the same in this respect), then also keep a document under your version control system that links to these specific versions.

user_1179110
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