On Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:32:15 GMT, Nir Lisker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> I don't quite get this aversion to `ant`. >> >> `ant` is not aware of the build around it. As a result, it doesn't reuse >> code so it's very verbose and it's much slower since it does no caching or >> parallelizing. It just executes the same thing every time. Try to write a >> build for JavaFX with `ant` and with Gradle and you'll quickly see how >> Gradle does almost all of the work for you. >> >>> This build file worked without changes since probably 2014 >> >> Which one? The one in this PR is completely new. >> >>> yet with gradle we had to go through upgrades, additional build steps... >> >> Because JavaFX proper changed and these manual tests didn't. These tests >> were not modularized unlike the JavaFX modules, JavaFX got new modules and >> these tests didn't, and we chose to update the Gradle versions but not the >> `ant` version. If you keep the Gradle version at 4, it will also work with >> no changes, why update it? When was the last time `ant` was upgraded in >> JavaFX? According to my file system, not since 2018 at least (version >> 1.10.5). >> >> Besides, the Gradle build of JavaFX runs an ant-like script to build >> everything, Gradle isn't exactly invoked, it's more of a shell. It was >> written incorrectly and eventually it will need to be fixed, which is what >> I'm trying to do. >> >> The complaints you're voicing are akin to the "Java is slow" mantra coming >> from people with a badly written Java program written in 2004, and then >> saying "I don't get the aversion to Fortran, I never needed to change it". > >> it also adds significant overhead [0] and a maintenance burden. >> >> [0] https://mill-build.org/blog/1-java-compile.html > > It's a marketing page from a competitor from 3 years ago that compares a > clean build, whereas the advantage of caching build systems is in repetitive > builds. I'm sure it is faster than Gradle in some scenarios. Those examples > don't even say if the dependencies were cached in the Gradle cache or > downloaded as part of the build time (looks like the latter from the > benchmarks). > The Eclipse compiler is also faster to work with than javac because it's > incremental, but a clean compile might show javac being faster. > > Still, if you want to use Mill I'm fine with it. I'm sure it's good. What > does it have to do with `ant`? All my builds are clean builds, I had my share of problems stemming from stale artifacts. Do you want to migrate all the build scripts in the project to use gradle? ------------- PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jfx/pull/2156#discussion_r4074626739
