At 03:58 PM 6/6/01 +0200, Stefan Bodewig wrote: >Roger Vaughn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> To my way of thinking, the discussion should not center around >> whether templates (dynamic or static) are "the right thing to do", >> but rather around how they impact, positively or negatively, the Ant >> core and therefore the structure and behavior of *all* Ant scripts. > >I agree - and I think Peter does as well. The thread started out with >Peter asking which combination of tools he should use to create his >prototype - so we can evaluate the impact - and somewhere down the >thread I said I wouldn't care too much ... > >We all agree that Ant should work with its Object model and that >parsing XML files should be just one way to create that model. I view >Peter's "Configure->Template->Build" system as another approach to >create this object model.
+100 >What I'm more or less fighting against ATM is that we make any such >other system an integral part of Ant itself - and I don't think Peter >disagrees with me here either. +1 here >Most of the problems people have with Ant - at least those people >asking for loops and such - stem from the fact that they are trying to >make Ant fit the paradigm they've been using in their respective build >systems before they switched to Ant IMHO. right. Almost all of these requests come from people who are trying to write generic targets - and while a good idea. Ant1 really doesn't support this well. >My major concern here is: Give them static templates and they don't >even bother looking up another way of doing what they need with Ant. >They'll talk about the complexity of XSLT and say Ant would be >difficult to learn and all that. XSLT is crap! A prime example of why design by comittee doesn't work ;) At one stage the Cocoon project was specifying/implementing a simplified templating language (SiLLy). Not sure if it ever got done but I was hoping to poke them later in ant dev cycle to see if they could rework so we could use it ;) >If we have some static templating mechanism I strongly wish that we >brand it as "this is not Ant". right - much like imake/automake/autoconf is not make ;) 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 | *-----------------------------------------------------*
