At 01:08 7/11/2001 +0000, Jose Alberto Fernandez wrote:
I feel there is a lot of BCS paranoia on this. Are we talking about tasks that
are impossible to implement unless Ant classes are loaded from the ClassPath?
If that were the case, then I could understand the argument, but it seems to me
a little too much to say that we cannot change anything because the whole
of the world economy would colapse if we were to do so.
Please go back and read what I wrote again. Then read it again. With a dictionary.
I did not in any way say "we cannot change anything because the whole of the world economy would colapse" and I strongly resent your statement that I did.
You asked why it was the Ant community couldn't make the changes you're suggesting and I gave one answer - that there are a lot of tasks that would break, particularly tasks that the core Ant team cannot know about.
Now, please read this very carefully: Provided it is done in a way that won't surprise Ant users, I have no problem at all with breaking backward compatibility.
The key is not surprising them - the worst thing you can do with customers is to foist upon them a mandatory change that causes them hassle and inconvenience with no apparent benefit to them. In fact, this is the best way to lose them.
This is why, IMHO, the changes you have been campaigning so vigorously for should NOT be found in any 1.x version but only in 2.x.
As I said, what I am suggesting does not make the code incompatible (you can still
provide the old scripts for this special cases. I would like to introduce some of this
features sooner, so that people start becomming aware of where we are heading.
If Peter is right and there will be another year before ANT2, more people will be writing
more bad tasks and the presure for keeping things as they are will be stronger.
No it won't - because it has always been advertised that Ant2 will break existing things.
If Ant 1.6 turns up and suddenly breaks my build, I know I would be monumentally pissed off.
If Ant 2.0 breaks my build, well, I knew it was coming so it's no big deal.
Bevan.
-- "Programming is an Art Form that Fights Back"
Bevan Arps (<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Senior OO Analyst, ACT Financial Systems
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