on 12/9/2000 5:52 PM, "Simeon H.K. Fitch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jon, > > I think that if you are going to -1 a task for an external tool, then > you need to back it up with a recommendation for some metric that we can > objectively use for determining inclusion/exclusion in Ant. Based on > your statement above, one could speculate that you would lobby to remove > all optional tasks, +1 for not including optional tool tasks that don't serve any real purpose for Ant directly and would in reality be better bundled with the original product that it serves. The rest of the tasks that don't fall into that category above should go into a jakarta-ant-optional CVS repo (like the Perforce task). In other words put things in their proper place. > and possibly even some things like support for > jikes, only because they provide support for tools that are developed > outside of Sun or Jakarta. Nope. See above clause. > I can't believe that this is really the case > with you. Therefore, I think you owe it to the submitter--doubly so > since he is new to the group--the courtesy of a more substantiated > argument against accepting his submission. Personally, I would love to > have an XMLC task in Ant as I use Enhydra on one of my projects, and > enhydra has a non-trivial user base. I certainly don't see it as any > less worthy than, say, the ejb tasks, or the perforce support. I'm not saying that the task isn't useful, I'm saying that the task should be included with Enhydra, not with Ant. > Comments like yours above do very little to serve the longer term > interests of the group, and only succeed in driving off potentially > highly effective contributors. I don't get it, what is wrong with including the task with Enhydra? That doesn't drive anyone away, it tells them the right location for where their code should really live. Maybe that person will become more of an Enhydra contributor. One issue that you have paid absolutely no attention to is the fact that the people contributing these tasks are not necessarily going to be the same people who are going to have to support the tasks. Given that I have been around these ASF projects nearly the longest of anyone here, I have seen literally hundreds of people come and go and have also been stuck with supporting code that people have contributed and then disappeared on. Ex: <http://java.apache.org/spfc/> I also feel that we will be forced to field questions on the Ant user/dev lists for support of these optional tasks. That isn't cool with me either since it takes away Ant's resources. I have a ton of Ant tasks that could be included with Ant. I don't include them because I don't feel they are necessary for the core of Ant. I put my tasks where they belong...with the projects that they work with. thanks, -jon
