Remove guava in wikitext

[gnl42]

Need to replace guava uses in wikitext with native/commons alternatives

[gnl42]

So I've run into a bit of snag. There are a couple of guava classes used by wikitext that don't have direct (or even simple ) replacement code. Specifically CharMatcher/Escapers

I'm not sure what's the best approach at this point:

1. Leave Guava jar in place (wikitext code is the only user)?
2. Take the time and effort to come up with custom alternatives?
3. Extract the appropriate classes from Guava and add them to wikitext (with appropriate mods)?

I have a working Poc of the third option, 25 classes in total. It's an ugly hack, but it works. Potentially would allow for a refactor/rewrite in the future.

Thoughts?
@BeckerFrank @akurtakov @merks @wimjongman

[akurtakov]

I would vote for 1. as adding 25 classes of thirdparty code will exclude us from getting bugfixes that might/will happen upstream. 2. is actually smth that has been happening in the last years although a bit too slow.

[merks]

3 sounds nasty 🤮
2 sounds like a lot of work and might end up with a similar but unproven amount of new code.
1 would leave us with the problem we hoped to eliminate.

I leave decisions to the folks doing the hard development work.

[wimjongman]

3 is an implementation of 2. Why do we want to ditch Guava again?

[akurtakov]

3 is an implementation of 2.

It could be or not. I've been replacing Guava usages with new Java versions API and keeping Guava for the rest (e.g 4fd84e3 9ad0273 2f0cc66 803292b and others), in that case - it's a slow reduction of guava usage without coping code to be maintained by the project.

[wimjongman]

in that case - it's a slow reduction of guava

Sure, that is reasonable.
George, Are you ok with leaving Guava in for the other unsupported cases?

[gnl42]

@wimjongman I've left the hard cases alone.