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Similarly, we expect to track new versions of the libraries we depend on. Please use a robust naming discipline of naming libraries to make versions clear.
* Except perhaps Saxon which is still the no-longer-progressing Saxon-B, which is fine for now. (Note: No longer using Saxon as of late 2014.)
Use Smaller Files
Scala's compiler is quite slow, and an this must be taken into account to insure a reasonable edit-compile-debug cycle for developers. A compilation unit is an entire file. Incremental compilation is improved in efficiency if the files are smaller. So avoid huge files that blend multiple concepts together. Do not, however, go so far as to break things apart that really are best understood if kept in the same file.
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An IDE with explicit support for building up a library of unit tests beside the code is really greatly superior.
An important theme is converting the code base so that it is easy to work on and can get the benefits of an IDE.
Coding Style
Unless specified below, all code should following the Scala Style Guide.
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XSOM - XML Schema Object Model
This library has been tried and we may still use it to assemble lists of schema files for us, so that it will handle the namespace resolution and include/import. But we have tried and found it unusable as far as abstract access to the DFDL Schema objects. Specifically, it does not have a first-class notion of a Schema Document. DFDL depends heavily on the notion of a Schema Document in that these are the units where lexically-scoped annotations are used. XSOM provides no way to even ask for the annotations on a schema document, so one cannot implement DFDL's lexical scoping feature using XSOM.I