I don't think so, as potential fop-dev have to learn about other things, too, especially CVS and how to build patches. I think that's a lot more complicated than having to install Ant.
fop-devs can be expected to know about Ant because almost every Open Source project written in Java I've encountered uses an Ant-based build (or a build system based on Ant like Maven or Centipede). Actually every Java developer can today be expected to know about Ant because it is the de-facto standard for Java builds. Simple users on the other side shouldn't be expected to build FOP. They should never have a reason to rebuild FOP. If they do we've probably failed to do every thing right. Here are some of Apache's Java projects I checked: - Xindice: build.bat/sh references separately installed Ant - Xerces-J: embedded Ant - Xalan-J: embedded Ant - xml-security: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Forrest: embedded Ant - Crimson: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - XML Commons: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Cocoon 2.x: embedded Ant - Batik: embedded Ant - WS SOAP: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - WS Jaxme: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - WS Axis: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - WS JUDDI: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Maven: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - James: embedded Ant - Velocity: not batch files, requires installed Maven - Tomcat 4: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Tapestry: Requires either installed Maven or Ant - Struts: Requires either installed Maven or Ant - Jakarta Regexp: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - POI: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Log4J: only build.xml, not batch files, requires Ant - Geronimo: not batch files, requires installed Maven - Avalon Framework: Requires either installed Maven or Ant On 11.12.2003 23:08:49 Michael Reiche wrote: > I absolutely agree, you will loose potential fop-devs. Do NOT remove > ant/build. I just recently discovered the easy all-in-one power of the > FOP src package. Download, unpack, fiddle with some .java, and run > build.sh! I know nothing about the use of ant, and would have had to do > some surfing before even getting to the point of doing a recompile. Well > I might benefit from this in other cases, but the word "build" tell a > lot more about the job than "ant", and build.sh has worked very well for > me. > > I'm sure there is a lot of other things that can be done, to cure > whatever fired this idea. The fact that fired this idea was that the build behaved differently between running the installed and the embedded Ant. Some people will want to run the FOP build from their IDEs (like JBuilder and Eclipse). In this case they can't use the embedded Ant anyway. Jeremias Maerki
