Re: [Jscheme-devel] BacktraceException

[Andrew M. <and...@wi...>]

Ken Anderson <kan...@bb...> writes:

[...]

>>Also, is src/build/bootstrap the only way (right way) to build the code?
>>I had to compile BacktraceException.java by hand and then run bootstrap
>>to re-build the jar file, but that somehow feels wrong.  Has the project 
>>considered Ant (http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/) as a build tool?
>
> I'm going to let you tickle a hot button.  I don't mean to offend you,
> or anyone who uses ant.  I'd like to start an honest discussion.  To
> my mind, ant represents a BIG answer to the problem of make, just as
> JAVACC, or Lex (is there a Java version?) provide a BIG answer to
> parsing and lexing.  I'm interested in smaller answers that are almost
> as capable that i can remember enough of that i don't have to go to
> the documentation. This makes me feel like i have more tools in my
> pocket, which feels better to me than going out and buying another
> book and reading for a while before i get the code i need.

I can understand this a lot.  I held off using ant for our internal
build mechanism (but for far too long).  The initial learning curve
appeared to be *just* too big.  However, about 4 months ago I bit the
bullet, and you know what, it took me about two full days to get
everything done.  Period.  Since then adding incremental changes has
been really easy.  I really wish I hadn't deliberated on the decision to
switch for so long.

So, despite the learning curve I would say it's worth the effort.  The
payoff's get bigger the more you use it.  I recently tried using
javamake (which has ant integration).  This involved adding an
additional 1-liner to my build.xml, duplicating my compile task to use
javamake, and that was it.  That's nice and simple integration, and
there have been a few other examples like this.  But of course this only
works because folk are1 targeting ant.

> What fells wrong about bootstrap?  We build the .jar file and run unit

Nothing per-se.  But if I take a c/c++ tarball from the net, I pretty
much expect the following to work: ./configure; make; make install.
Most of the time I don't even read either the INSTALL or README files --
I just expect this to be the de facto process.  In the Java space I
believe ant is becoming the de facto build process.  It would be nice if
you could download the latest+greatest jscheme and just type ant to get
a full build...

Just my 2 cents...

-- 
andy