What to do with 3rd party Javadoc

Question

Looking to see what others do with 3rd party (vendor) java documents? Do they get placed under source control so everyone can have access to them? Placed out on a local shared directory? other solutions that people have to work well.

We use clearcase and have developers spread out through the US along with a couple of off shore groups.

Answer 1

If you have some kind of intra/extranet available, I recommend collecting all of them there in one place. If you don't intend to modify them, I don't see any benefit in keeping them under version control.

Answer 2

I add them to source control.

I have

• lib/ for 3rd party jar files
• lib-doc/ for 3rd party javadocs
• lib-src/ for 3rd party sources

I find this good for future reference, when I may need to find the source or docs for the specific version of the api that I use. It could be that in 6 months or 12 months time, the version I use is no longer publicly available.