On 22/02/10 8:47 PM, Nacho Coloma wrote:
I am getting best results combining the user guide with the javadocs. It's easier if you think about gradle as "programming" (go search for the API, see what's there, stretch my groovy) instead of "using ant". The user guide is good for introducing concepts, but in the end it's easier if you understand what are you doing when you write "task 'foo' << " On the contrary, if you are used to ant/maven, you will try to use the user guide as a "list of tags and attributes available", which it is not. My .02 euro.
I think this is a really important point. Perhaps we should add a comment like this to the tutorials. Ultimately, writing a build script is about writing code to drive an API. It's not a config file. And although we want to (and do) document a lot of the API in the user guide, the Javadoc will always be the only complete reference to the API (the code is too, I guess).
One thing the user guide could do to help is give the reader a much clearer idea of how the DSL maps to the API, and where to find the Javadoc for a given element in the DSL. For example, we assume a lot about the reader's knowledge of Groovy, but I suspect almost everyone who is new to Gradle is also new to Groovy. The user guide could help these readers separate the Groovy magic from the Gradle magic.
-- Adam Murdoch Gradle Developer http://www.gradle.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, please visit: http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
