binarycloud-dev

[binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

Hi All,

preior I want to state that I'm not trying to force or somehow to replace
the make-system with ant. This is just a evil thought of mine occured some
time ago and maybe ant is a option. Maybe.

Has anybody deeper insight and experience with ANT (a very versatile java
based tool)? I just had a brief look over it and I personally think ant does
implement very much of the advanced make we're going to create. Thus we
would create double work by implementing ant flexibility with make.

I'm not experienced with ant, nor did I try to setup a base build config to
see how it performs (but I will :-)). Ant is primary designed for Java
applications, but it can be used for any other builds. From my knowledege of
ant, I've gained so far, the befits are:

- standardized and established
- really portable (unix, linux, windows) without having
  extra utilities installed (only requirement is jre)
- very powerful and flexible xml configuration of
  the build process
- very extendable with other tasks (so we could easyliy
  implement php2xml, bcc etc in a short time
- covers file permissions, copying files, building distributions
  and snapshots, and much more
- don't mess around with make & various command line tools
- recursive build support (call ant on every package level,
  and only build files in that package or in that package
  and everything below) with seperation of source and output.
- apache license

The only thing it requires is jre and ant itself and as it runs withing
native windows (no cygwin required, afaik) we don't need all the make tools
and don't take care of all windows specific stuff (/ = \ etc). Of courses it
is based on java and so the startup, and execution is not as fast as make
and friends.

The big advantage is protability, flexiblity and most stuff we plan is
already utilized with ant. So I think we should seriously consider a
possible usage of ant.

I know some of you guys don't love Java, so I do. And introducing another
technology in bc may be not wanted. But not everything about java is bad,
and ant might be a candidate of "take the good things leave the bad".

I'm going play around a bit with it.

As I said I'm not very experieced with ant, so what do you think?

andi

Re: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

> Hi All,
> 
> preior I want to state that I'm not trying to force or somehow to replace
> the make-system with ant. This is just a evil thought of mine occured some
> time ago and maybe ant is a option. Maybe.
> 
> Has anybody deeper insight and experience with ANT (a very versatile java
> based tool)? I just had a brief look over it and I personally think ant does
> implement very much of the advanced make we're going to create. Thus we
> would create double work by implementing ant flexibility with make.

hmm... go on..


> I'm not experienced with ant, nor did I try to setup a base build config to
> see how it performs (but I will :-)). Ant is primary designed for Java
> applications, but it can be used for any other builds. From my knowledege of
> ant, I've gained so far, the befits are:
> 
> - standardized and established
> - really portable (unix, linux, windows) without having
> extra utilities installed (only requirement is jre)

The JRE requirement bugs me a little (yet more pain in the ass setup... but
I'm still interested)

> - very powerful and flexible xml configuration of
> the build process

ooh.

> - very extendable with other tasks (so we could easyliy
> implement php2xml, bcc etc in a short time

ooh.

> - covers file permissions, copying files, building distributions
> and snapshots, and much more

ooh.

> - don't mess around with make & various command line tools

If we build a configure system I don't see that being a problem.

> - recursive build support (call ant on every package level,
> and only build files in that package or in that package
> and everything below) with seperation of source and output.

We'll do that (easily) with gnu make.

> - apache license

That's cool.

> The only thing it requires is jre and ant itself and as it runs withing
> native windows (no cygwin required, afaik) we don't need all the make tools
> and don't take care of all windows specific stuff (/ = \ etc). Of courses it
> is based on java and so the startup, and execution is not as fast as make
> and friends.

And that is a big thing for me, at least.
I'm taking great pains to design a make system that will be as screaming
fast as possible.

And what we're doing is mostly implemented in php anyway.. so the role of
gnu make will really be just to call our utilities in a convenient way.

> The big advantage is protability, flexiblity and most stuff we plan is
> already utilized with ant. So I think we should seriously consider a
> possible usage of ant.

Some of the XML config stuff sounds very nice.
I'd like to see it function before I bit though :)

> I know some of you guys don't love Java, so I do. And introducing another
> technology in bc may be not wanted. But not everything about java is bad,
> and ant might be a candidate of "take the good things leave the bad".

I have no hatred for java, _but_ we would be mixing languages and that means
lots of extra software to install.

> I'm going play around a bit with it.

Could you send a little quick-setup example to the list so we can check it
out and see what we think?

If it's cool enough... :)

> As I said I'm not very experieced with ant, so what do you think?

Let's play with ant a bit and see.

_a

RE: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

Hi Alex,

>> - standardized and established
>> - really portable (unix, linux, windows) without having
>> extra utilities installed (only requirement is jre)
>
>The JRE requirement bugs me a little (yet more pain in the
>ass setup... but I'm still interested)

Hmm. I'd no problems with it. Just untared it into /opt and set up
JAVA_HOME, and included it in path.

>> - very powerful and flexible xml configuration of
>> the build process
>
>ooh.

I attached a example build file. It's from EIRC java chat client applet.
It's a small project and the build.xml gives a brief overview of the very
basic ant feautures.

>> - don't mess around with make & various command line tools
>
>If we build a configure system I don't see that being a problem.

Not really, at least under unix like systems. But much people develop and
set up complete dev system on windows, so I think they don't want to mess
around with cygwin. Especially in the enterprise sector java is established
and it would be convinient for those people to handle this, they want to
have a _fast_ setup process, not messing around downloading additional
tools.


>> - recursive build support (call ant on every package level,
>We'll do that (easily) with gnu make.

Jepp, I just wanted to point out that ANT can do this, too :-)


>> Of courses it is based on java and so the startup, and
>> execution is not as fast as make and friends.

>And that is a big thing for me, at least.
>I'm taking great pains to design a make system
>that will be as screaming fast as possible.

Yep, thats a good point. But it's only the make process. It's a matter of
how much we could benefit from feautures at the cost of speed. I can't say
not if it's worth it.

>And what we're doing is mostly implemented in php anyway..
>so the role of gnu make will really be just to call our
>utilities in a convenient way.

And that's a thorn in my eye. All this tools required only for basically
calling others.

>Some of the XML config stuff sounds very nice.
>I'd like to see it function before I bit though :)

Ok, I'll experiment with it some time, basically replacing the Make we
currently have. And we'll see how it works.

>I have no hatred for java, _but_ we would be mixing languages and
>that means lots of extra software to install.
That's a point.

>Could you send a little quick-setup example to the list
>so we can check it out and see what we think?

ok, see other mail.


andi

Re: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

Booooooooooo!

=]



> I know some of you guys don't love Java, so I do. And introducing another
> technology in bc may be not wanted. But not everything about java is bad,
> and ant might be a candidate of "take the good things leave the bad".

Re: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

Hello,

Before anybody decides to go somewhere else, MetaL compiler has a module
for building projects. It certainly beats anything that exists because of
some innovating features that among many other things do not require that
you figure any dependencies on files that are used to build a target
because it can keep track of that for you.  This is a blessing for very
large projects.

I did not have the time to document anything from MetaL modules, but if you
are really serious on getting a build system that really helps your
development, I think you should bother and take a look on MetaL compiler
build process.


Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=ml...@ac...
--
E-mail: ml...@ac...
URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/
PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp
--

Re: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

> Hello,
> 
> Before anybody decides to go somewhere else, MetaL compiler has a module
> for building projects. It certainly beats anything that exists because of
> some innovating features that among many other things do not require that
> you figure any dependencies on files that are used to build a target
> because it can keep track of that for you.  This is a blessing for very
> large projects.
> 
> I did not have the time to document anything from MetaL modules, but if you
> are really serious on getting a build system that really helps your
> development, I think you should bother and take a look on MetaL compiler
> build process.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Manuel Lemos

Hi manuel,

I will have a look, thanks. Also, check out binarycloud.tigris.org: this
list is dead (bin...@li...) the new list is at
de...@bi... - I took your suggestion and moved to Tigris. So
far I am very happy :)

best,

-alex

RE: [binarycloud-dev] ANT vs. MAKE

[<bin...@li...>]

Hi Manuel,

>I did not have the time to document anything from MetaL modules, 
>but if you are really serious on getting a build system that 
>really helps your development, I think you should bother and 
>take a look on MetaL compiler build process.

Cool, I'll have a closer look this week.

Andi