> -----Original Message----- > From: Magesh Umasankar [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Sunday, 10 February 2002 5:03 AM > To: Ant Developers List > Subject: Re: What is going on in ANT1.x > > > From: "Steve Loughran" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > True, but I have also seen a lot of bugreps > > dealt with by saying "download the nightly > > build"; some people may be forced to upgrade > > for bug fix reasons > > There have been numerous messages in ant-user > also where using a nightly build was suggested > as the alternative. So my questions are: > > 1. Are these hints for us to get another > release out the door? > > 2. Do we have any major feature addition > in mind for Ant 1.5? If so, what are they? >
There's 2 things I'd like to do, if I find time. Nothing worth holding up a release for, though. * Include the <cc> task as an experimental task. I don't think the task interface is quite right yet, so it would be too early to include it as an 'official' task and freeze the interface. However, the best way to get the interface right is to get people using the task, and, well, the best way to do that is to include it in an Ant release. It might be interesting to use this as an experiment to see how an ant-commons project might work. That is, the <cc> task wouldn't live in the Ant 1.x tree, but in its own 'C/C++ tasks' project somewhere. The C/C++ tasks would have an independent release cycle to Ant. An Ant distribution would include the latest released cpptasks.jar, which the user could replace with newer (or older) versions if so desired (just like the packages in your favourite linux distro). * Replace the defaults.properties files for type and task defs, with an XML descriptor. The motivation for this change is to move us incrementally towards an antlib solution. This first step would let us try out a format internally for our built-in, optional, and experimental tasks. It would not be a published format, and would only be used in our own Jar files. The <typedef> and <taskdef> tasks would not support the XML format (though an experimental <x-import> task might). The XML format would start off very, very simple, without much more info than currently in the default.properties files. Probably just a name -> classname mapping, and some versioning info. It might be XDoclet generated, or might be hand-crafted. The main difference between the new and old descriptors will be 1) XML format rather than .properties file, which makes it very easy for us to add new meta-info (like 'deprecated' or 'experimental' flags, say), and 2) every Jar in $ANT_HOME/lib would be able to include a descriptor, rather than there being a single descriptor. If we can squeeze this into the 1.5 release, then we will be able to start releasing groups of tasks independently of the engine, and have a good starting point for adding an <import> task. What are people's thoughts on this? If no-one is going to -1 this proposal, I can go over the various antlib proposals that are sitting around, and come back with a more solid plan. Adam -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
