I like the sound of Gradle; http://www.gradle.org/
Seeing as were going to support the use of Groovy, for configuration,
this seems very interesting:
From the Gradle Website:
Gradle is a build system which provides:
* A very flexible general purpose build tool like Ant.
* Switchable, build-by-convention frameworks a la Maven (for Java
and Groovy projects). But we never lock you in!
* Powerful support for multi-project builds.
* Powerful dependency management (based on Apache Ivy).
* Full support for your existing Maven or Ivy repository infrastructure.
* Support for transitive dependency management without the need for
remote repositories and pom.xml or ivy.xml files (optional).
* Ant tasks as first class citizens.
* /Groovy/ build scripts.
And from the User guide:
2.2. Why Groovy?
We think the advantages of an internal DSL (based on a dynamic language)
over XML are tremendous in
case of build scripts. There are a couple of dynamic languages out
there. Why Groovy? The answer lies in
the context Gradle is operating in. Although Gradle is a general purpose
build tool at its core, its main focus
are Java projects. [2] In such projects obviously the team members know
Java. One problem we see with Ant
[3] and Maven is, that it involves a lot of knowledge only available to
the build master. Such builds are very
hard to comprehend, let alone to modify by a person not deeply involved
with those tools. <insert>This speaks to me!</insert>
We think a build should be as transparent as possible to all team members.
You might argue why not using Java then as the language for build
scripts. We think this is a valid question.
It would have the highest transparency for your team and the lowest
learning curve. But due to limitations of
Java such a build language would not be as nice, expressive and powerful
as it could be. [4] Languages like
Python, Groovy or Ruby do a much better job here. We have chosen Groovy
as it offers by far the highest
transparency for Java people. Its base syntax is the same as Java's as
well as its type system, its package
structure other things. Groovy builds a lot on top of that. But on a
common ground with Java.
License: Apache v2.
Anyone on the list played with Gradle?
Cheers,
Peter.
