Allow me to insert my Java / *nix developer novice-compared-to-people-here
2c =)
I've only been paid to write Java code for 6 months as a co-op. There were
10+ developers at the company, and only one of them understood makefiles.
That one person wrote and maintained a number of makefiles, and it really
came down to not being "worth it" for the rest of us to understand the
Makefile format. Why? When the files were there and working and everyone
was happy.
With Ant, I was able to accomplish the same thing, and fully understand the
"whys" and "hows" of everything that was going on, in about 10 minutes (with
the help of the ant docs and examples of course) and as many lines of XML.
I've always considered it peripheral to getting "real work" done, so I don't
wish to devote much brain power to it. Call me lazy, but that's just the
way I am ;) I actually have dreaded having to learn the Makefile format for
my personal projects and when I got a hold of Ant, I was very relieved!
- r
p.s. i don't mean to trivialize the Makefile stuff. It's funky!
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Bauman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: November 12, 2000 5:11 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Ant rant
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, Michael Stanley wrote:
>
> > > And don't say "ant is cross platform, make is not" because
> that just isn't
> > > true. Was someone just bored with the wheel and wanted to reinvent it?
> >
> > Ant is more than a cross platform make utility. Ant is
> platform independent,
> > which means alot more than cross platform. Ant is a make
> utility geared to meeet
> > the needs of Java. Java is "Write once run anywhere" and so
> is Ant. It is also
> > specifically made to meet the build requirements of Java code,
> capable of
> > anything from creating Jars to Javadocs. Its very easy to
> learn and its high
> > modularity makes it very easy to expand.
>
> I guess this is an important distinction to some people. I'm not a
> purist; the JVM is written in C, so none of us can claim to be purists ;)
>
> > Ant also goes further than make by adapting to XML for data
> representation and I
> > assume there is no need for me to go into the benefits of that :)
>
> Once again, standard data representation as opposed to problem-specific
> data representation is an important distinction to some people.
>
> What would really be nice would be if there were some kind or translator
> that could convert a GNU Makefile into Ant build script and vice versa. Is
> this on the radar screen Ant devleopers?
>
> I have all kinds of problems using new versions of Tomcat (and someone
> said that they are suprised at how few people try the milestone builds /
> betas) and many of them come from problems with Ant. So I think Ant is
> actually _preventing_ people from getting the most out of Tomcat. (just an
> opinion: no flame intended!)
>
> Many many programs that use autoconf are out there in OSS. I feel like we
> aren't leveraging our own past.
>
> > My 2 cents
> > Michael Stanley
> >
>
> And only mine as well, summarized by "Stand on The Shoulders of Giants"
>
> Nick
>
>
>
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