I didn't so much have a question, as an observation. I do see MANY clear advantages of NAnt over make and shell scripts as you do. My only issue was just with how it's being presented. It seems that NAnt would be very good at solving a lot of problems that make would have difficulty solving. I guess I see NAnt as more useful than JUST to replace make, and I'm wondering why the "marketing department" isn't making more hay out of the other things NAnt could do.
The speed of building isn't terribly critical to me, but optimizing a NAnt script might be kind of tedious, so I agree with your observation that it might be easier in some cases to make a faster build in make than in NAnt. I wonder, therefore, why there wouldn't be a "make" task that would invoke an old makefile? I know you could do it with exec... I suspect someone WILL come up with an msbuild task at some point. Having your build scripts be cross platform may be important to Java people, but it is less so to most of us C++ folks. I agree with all the other well stated points you've made. Thanks for your response. -Kelly > -----Original Message----- > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Foster, Richard - PAL > > I would also agree that the general impression reading the "marketing" > is that Nant (and Ant, on which it is based) is a better "make". > > I think the problem is with your definition of "better". If you are > looking for something that will accomplish a build in the fastest > possible time, then Make (or some other build tools) may still be a > better choice for you than Nant. If you are looking for something that > will faithfully perform all necessary steps to reach your > eventual goal, > then Nant, MSBuild or a simple script may make more sense depending on > your system environment. > > You could look at Nant as a replacement for shell scripting (or batch > files), but it does have some significant advantages: > > 1) Like make, it has the concept of dependencies (although they are at > the "target" level), and will faithfully reproduce the appropriate > targets in the most sensible order. Try doing that with basic shell > scripting. :-) > 2) Because it uses "tasks" instead of hard coded executables, > the build > scripts are (theoretically) cross platform. In addition, you > should not > need to recode your build scripts just because release 3 of product X > takes its command line parameters in a different format. Instead the > modifications occur in one place (the task itself). > 3) The tasks can be optimized for the specific operation they perform. > 4) The strongly-typed nature of the script reduces the chance that a > typographical error will go undetected. (The difference between "-0 > somefile.txt" and "-O somefile.txt" may not be easy to spot > depending on > your font settings, but a tag like <output> would either validate > against the schema, or not. > > I hope this helps to answer your question. > Regards, > Richard E-Mail messages may contain viruses, worms, or other malicious code. By reading the message and opening any attachments, the recipient accepts full responsibility for taking protective action against such code. Sender is not liable for any loss or damage arising from this message. The information in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee(s). Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorized. ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own Sony(tm)PSP. Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php _______________________________________________ Nant-users mailing list Nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-users
