At 09:25 20/3/01 -0800, Bill Brooks wrote: >What I'd like to see in Ant 2.0 is a much more thought out declarative >language for the XML build control files that stays firmly within the non >procedural programming paradigm.
+1000000000000000 ;) >With this, we need extensive documentation and examples so that people >with little programming background understand why build.xml files work the >way they do with the syntax they have. ouch - are you volunteering ? ;) >Other than the obious advantages, this would have three good side effects. > >1. Obviate the need for continually-asked for, half-baked, control > stuctures. >2. Prevent Ant from becoming a monstrosity of a scripting language like > perl >3. Lower the traffic on ant-user and ant-dev initiated by people who think > that all languages must be somehow procedural in order to be useful and > that all those who think otherwise are hopeless purists who > must be worked around by hosting external Ant tasks on SourceForge. While I think it is pure lunacy to encourage/host/enable control structures and think that it is better to have one simple method for doing X. However ... I would not be willing to block the ability by any means and encourage anyone to host tasks/forks elsewhere if they want to do something differemt (like those foul control structures ;]). Over last 3-4 months I have been learning that it is often better to have activity, quantity and low quality .. err lots of places for improvement ;) when building a community. Why do you think I kick the Ant nest every now and again (hint: it's to see activity ;-]). Secondly - documentation. To do this correctly we need good docs. Its a pity duncan left as he was going to write a book on Ant (or maybe still is?). Without a volunteer to do this I think that too many bad practices will be in place to "force" our design belief on others (even if it is for the best). Cheers, Pete *-----------------------------------------------------* | "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, | | and proving that there is no need to do so - almost | | everyone gets busy on the proof." | | - John Kenneth Galbraith | *-----------------------------------------------------*
