Uh-oh!

["B.C. Holmes" <bc...@interlog.com>]

      A bad thing happened today; I started thinking.  I thought up
another requirement for a WebDAV client: an Ant client!

      Ant has a task that interacts with CVS, but it occurs to me that
a much more general task would be a DAV task, so that Ant could get
and put stuff into any DAV-compliant repository.

      And then I started thinking about that some more, and I realized
that an Ant DAV task would satisfy another need that was lingering
around in the back of my brain: the ability to replicate content from
the repository onto a production web server.  Where I work, for
example, we don't want to get stuff directly from the repository
because:

- it's slower than letting the web server get it from the file system;
- we want a really secure, read-only production web server; and
- we may want to make some changes as stuff goes from "development" to
"production" (e.g. all the e-mail links to tester1@mycompany.com now
go to webmaster@mycompany.com).

     So with a combination of Ant and a DAV client, I can replicate
sites out of a development repository onto my production server! 
That's neat!

BCing you
-- 
B.C. Holmes         \u2625         http://www.interlog.com/~bcholmes/
"You know how deep some things are, and it's just impossible to get
 them out?  It all gets jumbled up inside.  Love, hate, nightmares...
 dreams.  Then you meet somebody you think will understand, but you
 don't know what to say.  Then you're afraid to say anything."
            - _Strangers in Paradise_

WebDAV Client

[Remy Maucherat <re...@apache.org>]

>       A bad thing happened today; I started thinking.  I thought up
> another requirement for a WebDAV client: an Ant client!

I almost fell off my chair when I read that ;-)

>       Ant has a task that interacts with CVS, but it occurs to me that
> a much more general task would be a DAV task, so that Ant could get
> and put stuff into any DAV-compliant repository.
>
>       And then I started thinking about that some more, and I realized
> that an Ant DAV task would satisfy another need that was lingering
> around in the back of my brain: the ability to replicate content from
> the repository onto a production web server.  Where I work, for
> example, we don't want to get stuff directly from the repository
> because:
>
> - it's slower than letting the web server get it from the file system;
> - we want a really secure, read-only production web server; and
> - we may want to make some changes as stuff goes from "development" to
> "production" (e.g. all the e-mail links to tester1@mycompany.com now
> go to webmaster@mycompany.com).
>
>      So with a combination of Ant and a DAV client, I can replicate
> sites out of a development repository onto my production server!
> That's neat!

Ok, I get the point. It's something like the "cvs" task. Very convenient
indeed.
I think it will be easy to write with the DAV client library.

>      I'd really like to help out more with Slide (as you might have
> guessed, I have a lot of enthusiasm for its potential).
>
>      I've been spouting off about all the neat things that one can do
> with DAV Clients, and since I was fiddling with a PROPFIND/PROPPATCH
> client anyway, I thought I would volunteer to work on finishing the
> webdav.client packages.  I make that offer a bit cautiously, though,
> as I've never participated in any open source project before, and will
> probably prove ignorant about some pretty basic stuff.

Cool ! I'm working of the client basic functionality right now (GET should
be done). I'm doing OPTIONS, PUT, HEAD later today.

>      But I'm offering to help if you need it; I only see your name
> beside tasks in the status.html, and if you're willing to put up with
> me, I'm willing.

That's great news :-) I've added you to the client library section.

Remy