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Say I have a module storage-abstract, which contains abstract logic (framework) for storing key/values. I also have some (arbitrarily many) implementations of this abstraction, each in a separate module, like storage-files, storage-db, storage-cloud and so on.

Now say that there is a class AbstractStorage in storage-abstract that looks like follows:

// in storage-abstract
import {Interval} from 'some-3rd-party-lib';

abstract class AbstractStorage {
  // ...
  protected abstract _storageLimit: Interval;
}

export {AbstractStorage}

Now each concrete storage has to provide its own value for _storageLimit and thus know Interval. I could solve this the following way:

// in storage-files
import {AbstractStorage} from 'storage-abstract';
import {Interval} from 'some-3rd-party-lib';

class FilesStorage extends AbstractStorage {
  // ...
  protected _storageLimit = new Interval(1, 7);
}

export {FilesStorage}

This works fine, but the problem is that now storage-abstract and storage-files may depend on different versions of some-3rd-party-lib, causing subtle bugs somewhere. The approach to prevent this (at least for NPM) is to specify some-3rd-party-lib as a peer dependency (with a certain version) of storage-abstract I assume.

But there is another approach: Given that storage-abstract is in some sense like an API to storage-files, it may (re-)export Interval; storage-files may then use this export and thus no longer depend on some-3rd-party-lib directly (or its own version of it):

// in storage-abstract
// ...
export {
  AbstractStorage,
  Interval, // <-- new
}

// in storage-files
import {
  AbstractStorage,
  Interval, // <-- new
} from 'storage-abstract';
// removed: import {Interval} from 'some-3rd-party-lib';
// ...

Which approach is the better (or what are advantages and disadvantages)?

Remirror
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  • Would you look on this question any different if `Interval` was used in a public method of `AbstractStorage` and not just in a private/protected part? Why/Why not? – Bart van Ingen Schenau Nov 17 '22 at 09:48
  • No, I think I would not. With `Interval` being exposed by a public method, it became part of the interfaces of `AbstractStorage` as well as `FilesStorage`, but that does not seem to have an influence on the potential versioning problem between those classes. – Remirror Nov 17 '22 at 10:00

0 Answers0