On 11 Jul 2002, Stefan Bodewig wrote: > > Improving Ant on the current codebase is not impossible, and it > > seems many people believe this is the way to go. > > Are you sure you have your numbers straight? Let me count, Costin and > myself (and I wouldn't even cast a -1) on the one side and Jon, Erik, > Peter, Adam, Magesh, Diane and you on the other.
By another count, most people haven't look deep into any proposal. It took me a lot of time to understand both ( I started months ago, and I still can't say I know them very well ). Again - my -1 is on adopting a large chunk of code, mostly unreviewed ( and certainly not the level of review ordinary changes in ant have ). And I'm -1 on making the core more complicated than it is - and so far both proposals do that IMHO, mostly without real gains. But of the 2 proposals, Mutant is what I would have probably choosed if forced to. And I have no problems with adopting a new core or/and new implementation - if it is clearly better. What if instead of deleting mutant, you start selecting the most important features/interfaces and propose them, one by one, to the main branch ? For example in a org.apache.ant.core package. Things like the Task interface - we can then spend the time and review it, decide if 'handleSystemOut' is really needed ( or what it means ). It can be merged with the equivalent concept in myrmidon, and we can make the current Task implement/extend it ( I would prefer it as an abstract class - they're many times better for backwared compat ). Or we can take the SAX2 code and implement it as a ProjectHelper, eventually after we select a new org.apache.ant.core abstraction/interface for this particular operation. I can drop the ProjectHelper2 and use your code ( or the code from myrmidon ). The new core shouldn't be more complex than the current one - so it shouldn't have too many or too complex interfaces. And each inteface needs a full and _VERY_ deep review and discussion - I would ask for at least 3-4 weeks on each. As for JDK1.1 compat - I'm strongly against making the new interfaces require 1.2. There is absolutely no justification. I'm ok with using 1.2 in the implementation - since 1.1 implementations will be possible. I'm willing to volunteer to deal with 1.1 problems in 1.6 - eventually by replacing the introspection-based code with the tomcat.util.compat package. I hope everyone realize how many users ant has - I suspect more people use ant than JDK1.4 today. There are huge investments in time and learning, books, etc. If we really want a new API for future - it better be _very_ good. Costin > > > BTW, if another committer would like to take over management of the > > Ant mailing lists, I think that would make sense since I will be > > taking a break. > > Does anybody know whether it is possible to have more than one > moderator? > > Thank you, Conor. > > Stefan > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
