Re: [Rails-devel] New build process and installer for Rails 2.0?

[Stefan F. <ste...@we...>]

You are right I did not tell you why exactly.

I hope at least some of the arguments are convincing enough...
Stefan

A) Build tool:
All build tools on the market will allow us to get things done. The main 
improvements are functionality and ease of use.

Duplication of definitions in the current build.xml and rails_build.xml 
files and the

I started working on smaller scale fun projects using either for Android 
or using one of the recent JVM languages like Scala and Groovy.

And for all of those there is gradle a possible solution.

Compared to ant I believe gradle is better documented, provides more 
features and is easier to use.

And I have more experience with gradle compared to ant. And I do not 
think that there is anyone with a lot of Ant programming on Rails now.

My choice of gradle is mostly due to the ease of use. The second reason 
is the improved functionality (e.g. easier to integrate with Eclipse and 
other IDEs and for dependency management).

B) Installer
Here it is mostly to be able to try and test new features.

See for example:

http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/installbuilder-features.html

http://www.ej-technologies.com/products/install4j/features.html

Some features might be desktop integration (icons, file assoc), 
automatic JRE update, creation of resource bundles to make allow quicker 
updates etc.

However it is not as important as a new build tool.




On 02/05/2014 03:29 PM, brett lentz wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 7:45 AM, Stefan Frey <ste...@we...
> <mailto:ste...@we...>> wrote:
>
>     There was something I did not remember was still to be done before I
>     will release an alpha:
>
>     I intend to update the build process and suggest for this using gradle
>     (http://www.gradle.org).
>
>     I compared this to adding apache ivy (http://ant.apache.org/ivy/) and
>     stay with the previous ant/eclipse-build.
>
>     My strong feeling is that I prefer to make the move to the
>     next-generation build tool. Using xml seemed as weird for a build as
>     writing Makefiles. And it seems much less restrictive than maven is/was.
>
>
> The biggest question I have is... why?
>
> What will changing build tools enable us to do that we can't with the
> existing tools?
>
>     I still want to hear if there are any objections, even if it will only
>     effect myself as I will be responsible for the rails2.0 build.
>
>     The other issue is to use installer to create packages for the different
>     operating systems.
>
>
>
> Again... why?
>
> What benefit does this give us over the current distribution method?
>
>     Unfortunately I have not found any reasonable non-commercial tool for
>     this task. However there are two installer products that provide free
>     licenses to OS systems:
>
>     Install4j: Requires a link to their page
>
>     http://www.ej-technologies.com/buy/install4j/openSource/enter
>
>     Installbuilder: No such requirement
>
>     http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/open-source-licenses.html?ModPagespeed=noscript
>
>     Does anyone of you have an objection or recommendation? If I do hear
>     nothing negative I would apply for a free license for Rails for both
>     products.
>
>
>
> I'm not immediately opposed to either idea, provided that there's a good
> reason to spend the time on that instead of implementing other desirable
> features.
>
> ---Brett.
>
>
>
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