> IMO, environment variables ensure that users can't build the
> project by simply checking out and typing "ant". Please no
> environment variables!
>
I will gladly adhere to the team's preferences, since I'm not a committer. :)
But I'd like to explain my reasoning:
The reasoning behind the env var approach is that the "average user" shouldn't ever have to check out anything from cvs...there should be a build target that creates a distributable binary (.zip, .tar.gz, whatever including any dependencies and documentation). The "average user" would download this file from hibernate.org (or sf.net) and start using it immediately.
In practice, users rarely mess with cvs (and shouldn't have to)...they just want to download, unzip, and start using.
Under this approach, the only people setting env vars would be the actual developers (who should know about the jar dependencies anyway) and the occasional "from scratch" builder. Even then, any dependency they needed would be politely printed out to the screen if they didn't already have it installed.
Besides, its not too much to ask an "average user" to create a single environment variable anyway. Ant, Tomcat, Jboss, etc, etc, etc all work the same way.
IMO, this is the cleanest approach to a build while keeping jar files out of CVS (which goes back to the whole "no dependency binary files in a _source_ control system" school of thought).
Les
P.S. Yeah, Yeah, I know...I'm a purist :P
