> I have been developing this Task that I am thinking of submitting to the ANT > community.
Always good for the community to get feedback and code :-) But spending to Ant is not the only possibility - see the list of external task libraries at http://ant.apache.org/external.html > It would be an optional task for SCM. Which? > I have a question though...my Task uses an external library. > That is, it needs a librabry for a Java API from the SCM tool that I am > developing the task for. The problem is, that Java API is not open source, but it is > available to customers who have purchased the SCM tool. Not unusual. But two things: - license We have to be careful whether it is allowed to write an open source application (the task) against that library. For example: if the lib is under GPL then the library has to be licensed under GPL as well - which is not ok for the ASF. In that case we use reflection for using the libīs functionality. - technically There are many optional tasks (see ANT_HOME/lib/ant-*.jar) which rely on external libs. While creating the distro (or compiling your own) the external jars have to be there. Otherwise Ants own buildfile "deselects" the relying classes. When not using these jars - nothing happens: only Antīs internal classpath is longer. When using an optional jar without the underlying lib youīll get an error message by Ant "Problem: failed to create task or type ... Cause: the class ... was not found. ..." > Should I be emaling that jar file too? or how does it work? Decide yourself if you want to contribute to Ant or maintain it yourself - Ant: - open a bug on bugzilla and submit the code - we couldnt deliver that external lib, so dont upload that - provide a patch to docs/manual/install.html#librarydependencies describing your dependency - Yourself: - create a webpage containing the infos and downloads - personally I would only provide a link to the 3rd party lib, seems to be more secure (legally) - create a path for xdocs/external.xml and send it via eMail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I am actually working for the company that distributes this SCM tool. I was > assigned to integrate it with the ANT community. So if there anything we need to > do, I would need to know. Your company could deliver the task with the SCM tool ... (like Tomcat its jsp compiler) > I wasn't really sure where to send my questions... Thatīs ok. > but I have been reading this > mailing list for a bit and I figured there are a lot of smart > people here who can help me. Thanks for the flowers :-) Jan
