Hi,
On Oct 4, 2008, at 11:07 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
<snip>
Ever since Hans Dockter realized that he was not going to be able to
build Gradle on Gant, but would have to have a new code base to
achieve
his goals, there has been a tension between the roles of Gant and
Gradle. The core technical difference between Gant and Gradle is that
Gant is simply a scripting systems whereas Gradle works with a DAG
as do
Make, Ant, Maven, SCons, etc.
Maven unfortunately does not use a DAG. This is another reason for
its inflexibility IMO.
-- Gant is the odd one out here as a build
framework, it does not build a data structure and reflect on that, it
just executes code.
I would say that Gant uses an implicit DAG created at runtime. This
is what the 'depends' call is all about, isn't it. To me this is the
same way as Ant is doing things.
<snip>
Gant is just a single jar and so is very lightweight whereas Gradle
has
a lot of dependencies and is relatively heavyweight.
This is a very valid point. Therefore we will put a lot of effort
into modularization soon.
<snip>
Gradle can support many of the Ant task scripting things that Gant
does
but Gant is so much more lightweight than Gradle for doing this.
Definitely in terms of size and dependencies (see above). Do you also
see a difference in regard to coding?
I am increasingly of the view that Gant should cease trying to be a
build framework and leave this role to a rapidly evolving Gradle.
Gant
should instead reposition itself as a lightweight, embeddable Ant task
scripting system. This is exactly how it is used in Grails.
Embedding
Gradle to do the Ant task scripting would for me be using too
heavyweight a tool for the task at hand -- though having a Gradle
rather
than an Ant build for Grails and indeed Groovy might be a good move.
I think it is time for Groovy (I don't know the Grails build) to show
the world by its build the advantages of a Groovy based internal DSL :)
<snip>
- Hans
--
Hans Dockter
Gradle Project lead
http://www.gradle.org
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