There are a number of tasks in Ant that require commercial software in
order to run. This is problematic in a couple of ways:
1) The Ant developers usually do not have access to the
commercial software, and so cannot confirm that existing code or
submitted patches work correctly.
2) All users who download the Ant base package are likely to
get a bunch of tasks that they will never have any use for since they
don't own the software and cannot easily get a copy to work with.
What I'd like to suggest is that we move all the tasks based on
commercial software out of the Ant release and into their own Antlibs.
This has already been done with the Borland Starteam tasks, and The
Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe package has been moved but not yet released
(and so older versions of the tasks still live in the Ant release).
Attempts to move a single task or set of tasks has been tried in the
past, but they failed to get the requisite number of votes because no
one knew whether the Antlibs could be maintained any more than the
current tasks. My feeling is that doing nothing (leaving unsupported
tasks in every Ant release) is worse than making the unsupported task be
an optional download through Antlibs, and to indicate clearly in the
Antlib that it is unsupported by the Ant team (if the team lacks access
to the commercial software).
I'd like to discuss whether to move all of the commercial tasks out of
Ant core/optional libraries and putting them each into their own
Antlibs. If people are generally favourable toward this proposition I'll
call a vote. My current thinking is that the vote should be divided into
two questions - moving the commercial tasks out of Ant, and opening up
Antlibs for each of them. Discussion could change that, of course.
We should also try to identify which of the new Antlibs will be
unsupported versus the ones that Ant developers can support because they
have access to the commercial software the tasks rely on.
The tasks that I can see that would be affected are as follows. Please
add or delete items from the list if you don't agree.
- Continuous/Synergy tasks: CCMCheckin, CCMCheckout, CCMCheckinTask,
CCMReconfigure, CCMCreateTask
- Clearcase tasks: CCCheckin, CCCheckout, CCUnCheckout, CCUpdate,
CCMklbtype,
CCMklabel, CCRmtype, CCLock, CCUnlock, CCMkbl, CCMkattr,
CCMkdir, CCMkelem
- EJB Tasks: Note that there may no longer be a need for these as
the servers are very old, we could instead deprecate and eventually get
rid of.
* blgenclient Borland Application Server 4.5 and 5.x
* ddcreator Weblogic 4.5.1
* ejbc Weblogic 4.5.1
* iplanet-ejbc iPlanet Application Server 6.0
* ejbjar Nested Elements:
- borland Borland Application Server 4.5 and 5.x
- iPlanet iPlanet Application Server 6.0
- jboss JBoss
- jonas JOnAS 2.4.x and 2.5
- weblogic Weblogic 5.1 to 7.0
- websphere IBM WebSphere 4.0
* wlrun Weblogic 4.5.1 to 7.0
* wlstop Weblogic 4.5.1 to 7.0
- Perforce Tasks P4Sync, P4Change, P4Edit, P4Submit, P4Have,
P4Label, P4Labelsync,
P4Counter, P4Reopen, P4Revert, P4Add, P4Delete,
P4Integrate, P4Resolve, P4Fstat
- PVCS
- ServerDeploy, but only for the jonas and weblogic nested
elements, generic can stay where it is.
- Source Offsite: sosget, soslabel, soscheckin, soscheckout
- Microsoft Visual SourceSafe: already an Antlib, just need the
vote to get it out of Ant core/optional and to get a release.
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