Sure the flowscript layer can (and will, I'm sure) be abused, but as much as ant build files, or sitemaps can reach a point where the mess and performance drags you down and refactoring is needed.
Since you did bring it up... ;)
Could you offer some tips on "how to refactor an ant build script for fun and profit in order to achieve order-of-magnitude improvements"? I'm curious about the mental model you were using during the refactoring, as the details can be gleaned from the build.xml
It was a quite easy trick, to tell you the truth...
Stefano came and visit us in January, I fiddled with his laptop screen and broke it (bye bye laptop screen)...
While he was trying to fix the screen he spilled some milk on the now disassembled keyboard (without noticing that the glass I provided was soaked in oil, and therefore very slippery).
Trying to clean the keyboard, he severed some of the contacts in the membrane (whops, was there a razor-blade in that Q-Tip I gave you, Stef? How unfortunate...)
Now, I recommend him to buy a new PowerBook-G4... To do so Stefano needs to raise some money, and to do so, he can simply build a site using Cocoon... So, Stefano signs the contract and orders the new PowerBook...
Ideally (how convenient), the Apple dealer is a friend of mine, and the leptop shipment is misteriously delayed... OF MONTHS, I might want to add...
Unfortunately Stefano has to build the site on his old home PC (_SLOW_ as hell, you wouldn't believe it)... After one week of "build run" he gets frustrated and rewrites the entire build system...
So, the whole story is, if you want someone to do something concerning performance, first make sure that you are going to destroy all his computers but one (the slow 6-years-old one with no RAM), you get him annoyed by making him do something CPU intensive for a week, and after that he'll figure out that probably it's time to rewrite stuff! :-)
Eeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasyyyyyyyyyyy....
Pier
