In message: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mark Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Hi, > I've just noticed that the user documentation package for ant (a tool, >not a library) contains 15 MB of API references. I've since filed bug >#174876 asking for this to be removed.
Sadly, having the API docs there is somewhat appropriate. >If anyone has legitimate reasons for including API docs in a -doc >package (for a program, not a library), then I would love to know what >they are. Ant is as much a framework as a tool; to get it to do what you want (if what you want isn't something that the ant developers thought was common or important), you frequently have to write helper classes that get loaded into the ant tool, and which then act as additional rule handlers. To write these helper classes, you need to know the ant API. I could say some uncomplimentary things about this design choice for ant, but there's really no point. The result, though, is that to properly get ant to do the right thing in many circumstances (particularly when using it with machine-generated code, non-java builds, or configuration), you have to extend ant via its API, and this is explicitly condoned and encouraged behaviour for the end-user. Thus, the API is in the end-user docs, not just the developer docs. I suppose that one could argue that anyone trying to use ant for their own programs (instead of just using it as an incidental tool for building someone else's program) should install an ant-dev package, too... but that seems slightly strange to me, since the person is still acting as an end-user for the tool, instead of incorporating it into their program. - Alex -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
