[jboss-dev] How can a project run in both AS 4.2.0 and AS 5.0?

[Tim Fox]

A posted something similar on this some time ago, but we didn't get to 
any conclusions so I'm bringing it up again.

JBoss Messaging has all its dependencies aligned with JBAS 4.2.0 - i.e. 
we use all the same versons of libraries as AS 4.2.0.

This means all the testing we did is valid when we install inside AS 
4.2.0 since we know we're still using all the same libraries.

However, JBAS 5.0 uses different versions of libraries to AS 4.2.0 - so 
we can't guarantee that the version of our project that runs in 4.2 will 
run in AS 5.0 - since we don't test against the versions of the 
libraries used by AS 5.0.

The only way around this AFAICT is for us to keep two versions of JBM 
(or at least to have two sets of dependencie)- one with a set of 
dependencies mirroring AS 4.2.0, and another with a set of dependencies 
mirroring AS 5.0.

But this is a big maintenance hassle - and will mean double the test 
runs. Our test runs already take forever.

How do other projects deal with this? Surely we are not the only ones.

Or perhaps other projects don't worry about it and "hope for the best" 
when installed in AS 5.0?