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List:       ant-dev
Subject:    Re: Tasks containing other tasks (was: Subtasks within tasks)
From:       "James Duncan Davidson" <james.davidson () eng ! sun ! com>
Date:       2000-02-28 23:46:59
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> My idea of in the large, was not reffering to the amount of files to Javac
but
> to the amount of tasks required of a large project in general. I can agree
that
> if the goal is just Java we may not need too much more because we have
> made the javac task so powerful that overcomes the shortfalls of ant as it
is
> today.

Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification.

> But, could we use and for building Apache (the webserver?), a tool for
that
> would
> have to take care of a more broad set of issued. My point is that ant has
the
> potential
> to break the current java "glass ceilling". And being a more declarative
way to
> define
> builds that what we have with MAKE today which I agree is quite a monster.

I don't know though. Taking on C based projects is quite a beast and I don't
think that we can make something that, in the end, will be better than
autoconf/make.

> > What would help is a way of building antfiles that was GUI based so that
you
> > aren't stuck typing in XML. A simple Jtree based GUI along with addTask,
> > removeTask buttons would go a ways there.
>
> GUIs are fine, but not the end of everything.

Of course not. Note that I wasn't proposing functionality in the GUI that
wouldn't be available, just making it nicer.

> With respect to the second part of your comment, I just have
> to mention that had such an attitude prevailed we would be writing
assembly
> language.
> Do you believe in code reuse? modularity? If someone composes a task is
because
> he plans to perform the same group of operations over and over and it
makes more
> sense
> writing it just once.

Of course I do. Silly. I work only with OO languages now adays 'cuz I hate
what came before for most things. The statement was only about the specific
example given. I didn't see how combinatorialy it would be any better than
the elements standalone. This doesn't mean that I have that attitude about
everything. Obviously Ant itself is an exercise in fairly decent OO what
with it's interfaces, abstract classes, and dynamic class.fornaming :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Duncan Davidson                               duncan@eng.sun.com
Java + XML / Portable Code + Portable Data                 !try; do();

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