hi, i am digging thought the "ant in anger" article and noticed that the author recommends having standard top-level targets like: build, test, clean, deploy, publish, fetch, docs/javadocs, all, and main and using ant calls to pass the control down the tree. so it seems like while some of the stuff (in the build.xml file) is generic (implementation), some of it is non generic (policy) and "knows" what's below in the build tree. it would seem that ant is smart enough to look at the build.xml file in each directory and do the right thing. is this more or less how it works?
there was a recent post from yingwang@uhunix2 about a directory called say buildtool that contained all of the JAVA_HOME, ANT_HOME properties (or perhaps the build tools themselves?). perhaps that should be one of the top-level targets? the author suggests having "internal" targets at each level like: init, compile, link/jar, staging. not sure what this is all about, buy it sounds sorta like the separation between interface (the standard top level targets) and implementation (the internal "targets"). also, i am a bit confused about properties. afaict, these are immutable (i.e. once defined, they will not be changed). i gather that this means that if you wanted to override some property, you would need to somehow process your build.properties in a "bottom up" manner (from the leaves to the root of the build process). so if i have a property in a build.properties file in a subdirectory and i do not use the ant call, then (assuming that ant finds the file in the subdirectory), it would seem like the properties would *not* be overridden. otoh, if i am using ant calls, what happens to all of the properties that have already been defined by descending the tree up to the point of this particular ant call? do these properties get lost when the new ant call gets made? when ant sees new build.xml and build.properties files do these "go away" when that ant call terminates? another issue that seems problematic is that of testing. we will be doing servlets, so there are at least four (4) levels of testing: junit, cactus, httpunit, and someOtherTesting. the cactus seems a bit complicated (he deploys in place somehow - i don't quite grok that yet). has anyone had any luck with putting different kinds of testing like these ant? thanks --- ray tayek http://home.attbi.com/~rtayek/ actively seeking telecommuting work vice chair orange county java users group http://www.ocjug.org/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] hate spam? http://samspade.org/ssw/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
