On 2012-02-13, Bruce Atherton wrote: > I spent some time starting to implement a very simple (only a few > tasks) new version of Ant that started from Java 7. Personal issues > have taken me out of the game for a while, but I've still been > wondering, could Java 7 and NIO 2.0 be a good reason to create Ant > 2.0?
There are things in NIO2 that can be added via FileUtils one way or the other, but it could also make us rethink our concept of Resources (although nio2's Path looks too limited for that). If we really want to take the burden of redesigning Ant on us then it certainly wouldn't only be NIO2 but also revolutionary things like generics. OTOH there will always be a reason to wait longer (lambdas, modules). I fully understand that throwing away the existing cruft can set free new energy. Personally I enjoy working on the Commons Antlib way more than working on the built-in Zip/Tar tasks because I could design them from a fresh start while the later have accumulated features with big care for API backwards compatibility. To me the strength of Ant (as it is) is in its tasks. The tasks are proven pieces of code that have been tested by an incredibly big amount of people. And even if we have about 200 bug reports open, most tasks do what they are supposed to do and do so very well. Any rewritten Ant would have a long way to reach the same level of stability. The same is true for the Compress Antlib vs the core tasks, of course. > It could be a way to sweep away the kind of cruft that is holding up > the release and to redesign Ant to reflect all the lessons learned > about how to build software in the last 10 years. This will lead us to the discussion of what Ant2 would be. A rewritten Ant that remains compatible (or mostly so) on the build file level or something quite different? Stefan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@ant.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@ant.apache.org
