There is also another possibility (the one that I am using) - write scripts
that generate ANT scripts and run them.  It is slower, but it is more
lightweight in a sense that it is completely separate from ANT, so it does
not depend on ANT code. That script could be in any language, but a language
with helpful syntactic sugar would be preferred.

- Alexey.

On 9/15/06, Dominique Devienne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 9/15/06, Jesse Glick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My personal experience with Ant has always been that the tasks are
> great, and the control flow is maddening. [...]
>
> I don't buy the argument that Ant is currently "declarative". It's
> nothing of the sort in my experience. [...]

Whao, it's good you got that off your chest Jesse ;-)

Great post! I don't agree on all your points, but my experience is not
far from your own. I too would like to have an official and easy to
use scripting language always available in Ant (and ECMAScript is a
good condidate), but as a way to extend the default Ant behavior or do
a one off thing for a given build, not to replace the current Ant.

What you describe (Ant in JavaScript, or a build tool as a script
language program) as already been done in Ruby, or Python (A-A-P) and
probably lots others. It's a radical change from the current Ant, and
one that, despite the scripty nature of current Ant builds, would only
lead to even more scripty and spaghetti build "programs". I could be
wrong of course.

I have no doubt BTW that you could write a JavaScript-based
Ant-equivalent that leverages the current Ant tasks. Maybe you should
even starts such a project, and do changes in the core where necessary
to support this project, but Ant should go on in its current XML-based
form IMHO, however flowed many people find it.

--DD

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Alexey N. Solofnenko trelony at gmail.com
home: http://trelony.cjb.net/
Pleasant Hill, CA (GMT-8 hours usually)

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