I'd like to kick off a discussion on what needs to be done to get Ant 1.6 to a 
release. I'm just going to ramble through some random thoughts I have been 
having in no particular order just to get discussion started. 

I don't have any fixed timeframe in mind, or anything so concrete at this 
stage but I think we need to start looking at it. After all, I can only stand 
seeing the javah bug reported so many times. Funny how often there is one bug 
that gets a lot of airplay that it indicates a release may be a good idea.

1. Code cleanup

there is a lot of code with HACK, EXPERIMENTAL, etc tags which I think we need 
to look at and decide what, if anything, needs to be done. I'd like to attack 
some of this with checkstyle, etc to improve overall code & javadoc quality 
and style conformance, etc.

2. Import task

I think this needs more testing and work. I currently have a disabled testcase 
that shows one problem. I think we have had some discussions on the meaning 
of basedirs for imported stuff without any clear resolution.

3. Antlibs

I'm not sure where this is up to. AddType has gone in but other bits are still 
to be done. I think once we have a workable antlib, we need to look at the 
packaging of the Ant optional tasks. I'd like to have polymorphism as part of 
all this.

4. xdocs proposal & manual generation

I'm not sure if this is still at the proposal stage or ready for primetime. I 
think we probably won't progress unless we agree that this is the way to 
generate the Ant manual and commit to supporting it as part of the standard 
build process. If it is the way to go, I'd like to hurry it along.

Right now the setproxy doco is generated and looks a bit different from the 
hand carved manual pages. We probably want a consistent look in the manual 
and perhaps even a similar look  to the rest of the Ant site. Also I want to 
have some PDF generation going.

5. lcp.bat replacement

Yes, I have this in mind for a while and will get something done soon on this 
next. This will be necessary for Windows operation with the new jar 
arrangement.

6. New Tasks and new features.

I've got some things I want to add to <parallel> to support timeouts, errors, 
etc plus the capability to have daemon threads. I've thought about whether 
<macrodef> could be done and would be a good idea. It would provide a way of 
composing tasks into larger tasks. Peter has mentioned a system to provide 
task default attribute settings for standard tasks. I've thought about an 
<antschema> as a companion to <antstructure>, potentially supporting the 
polymorphic stuff.

7. Bug reduction.

I'd like to go through the bugs like a dose of salts. I'd like to see all 
committers getting stuck into the backlog. The things that aren't going to be 
done or are unlikely in the forseeable future (e.g. 
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3807) could go, IMHO. 
Voting for bugs will help us to prioritise them.

OK, that's a start. Please let me know your thoughts.

Conor




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