On Wednesday, March 9, 2011 6:22:55 PM UTC+1, phil swenson wrote: > > What is ant doing? It's orchestrating your build. Only the most simple > build ends up being purely declarative. If this is the case, then ant is > fine I supposed. Orchestrating your build usually means having some > complexity - loops/conditionals/true variables/complex constructs (classes) > may be needed. >
Same argument applies to maven. Between maven and ant, you're covering a _heck_ of a lot of java community builds. The main argument that the community is looking into extensive scripting of builds (which I in theory agree with, builds just get complicated, it's a intrinsic thing) is gradle. > > Specifically regarding writing ant tasks for all your complex pieces would > result in an awful lot of specialized ant tasks + you need another build to > build the ant tasks. Scripting is just lighter-weight and easier. > As has been mentioned, swinging from an extreme introspective platform to one that has no introspection whatsoever is kind of out of the blue, and you've given us no arguments as to why this is such a fine plan. >From a practical standpoint, other than the fact that people 'just do not' use compiled languages for build scripts (the same could be used for deviating from ant - i.e. the argument from tradition does not apply here), what's the problem? Self-referential builds is a red herring - _of course_ the code for the build itself can either be compiled automatically before the build even starts in on the scriptable part, or different source directories can be staggered. Builds are _WAY_ more complicated than staggered builds. > Are you really going to write a specialized ant task just for iterating > over a bunch of other ant tasks? Are you really going to write a > specialized ant task for conditionals every time? People don't do this, > they use ant contrib's conditionals and loops or the macro task. This leads > to the hell I've mentioned. Anyone have a link to a hellish build.xml for > example? I can't use any from my current job as they aren't allowed to be > distributed. > The existence of a hellish build.xml is about as useful as the existence of a hellish python file. i.e.: completely useless hearsay and anecdote. > > And then try debugging ant xml/ant task mix. > That part is far simpler than many other build systems because so little magic is going on. You can also just run ant itself in a debugger and step through / breakpoint whatever you feel like. In theory a tool could be designed that lets you breakpoint your build.xml itself, but as far as I know nobody wrote it. That's not because its hard, its because nobody needs it. Suggesting you're blowing this way out of proportion. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
