On Thursday, Jun 12, 2003, at 13:20 US/Pacific, Jonathan Simon wrote:
The last example is about ANT. I spoke to Erik (hatcher) and James (duncan
davidson) about the whole abuse of XML in ANT proper not to mention all of the
stuff on the ant-contrib project.
Yep. I've been thinking for a while it's worthwhile to look at using a first class scripting language to actually build real "build-scripts". Of course, I haven't moved anywhere with it because I've been having way too much fun over with Mac OS X and Cocoa lately. :) Lack of itch to scratch leads to lack of action.
The point is that calling ANT from Jython is much easier than I initially
thought (you dont have to write ant translation stuff) but harder than I
secondly thought (you have to write some wrappers or something somewhere to
make the code legible).
I agree with that assessment. I think that you'll end up with quite a bit of a "wrapper" library in Jython to make it more "script native" to build a build-script--but one that still uses the underlying task objects. Whether that library is written in Jython or in additional mediator objects will be a subject to be debated.
Additionally, if we do this right, well be able to plug in any Java scrpting language of choice
(like JRuby). Then, the whole argument of the use of XML goes away and the purists and iconoclasts can all have their way-- without forking ANT.
And that would be a Really Good Thing(tm). I think such an effort would be a great thing to see and I hope that others join you in your quest. I do think using something like a BSF would be good so that you could use any scripting language--though I would be a bit concerned about allowing any scripting language because the n-dimensionality of the support burden goes up. And of course if you do use something like BSF, you'd want to put the "wrapper" functionality into mediator objects so that all languages could take advantage of it.
Anyway--it certainly sounds like a great thing to work out and there are other people that have had the same thought. I spent a while talking with Ken Arnold about these thoughts and there have been other hallway conversations at JavaOne with other folks that touched on this. There's a train there building up momentum. Have fun with it!
(cc me on any replies you'd like me to see since I'm not subbed up to the ant-dev mailing list right now)
James Duncan Davidson Coder, Speaker, Author http://x180.net/ [life live];
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