documentation (and a RESUBMIT)

[Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>]

Sam is right -we do need to think about documentation better.

I am resubmitting my document on how to use ant in a production system; I
hope it can be a ) committed and b) expanded on by people doing more complex
builds than me. Details on how to use XSLT with could be a special chapter
perhaps.

Other documentations areas we could think about are

-a simple tutorial, starting with a <javac> task, going through properties,
deployment, debug and release options, junit, filemaps etc, the focus being
on telling people facts in the the order they need to get a java project
done.

-a better guide to implementing ant tasks. Something that covers matching
tasks, java forking, setting timestamps, exception handling, external
process invocation, how to do parameters (filesets, enums etc) . Oh and
testing too.

I started on a tutorial last week, and unless someone has a better one ready
to commit I will keep going with it in my sparest of times. Does anyone want
to take up the challenge of writing the definitive guide to implementing an
ant task?

-Stve

Re: documentation (and a RESUBMIT)

["Simeon H.K. Fitch" <si...@fitch.net>]

Steve Loughran wrote:
<snip>
> I am resubmitting my document on how to use ant in a production system; I
> hope it can be a ) committed and 
<snip>

So, where's it gonna go? Diane? :-)

The more of this "real world" stuff we have the better, especially ones
that make strong points about "Ant is not make", to help people break
out of that mindset.

sim

-- 
Mustard Seed Software
mailto:simeon@fitch.net

Re: documentation (and a RESUBMIT)

[Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Stirling" <ss...@mediaone.net>
To: <an...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 18:06
Subject: RE: documentation (and a RESUBMIT)


> Nice doc, dude.  I read this.  It's well written, clear.  Bit of a tease
> with the mention of XSL to gen build files, but OK.

I dont use XSL, so cant cover how it can be used. Someone else needs to
cover that.

> It'd make a nice
> overview doc for practical applications and usage patterns in medium to
> large projects.

That is its intent.

Actually, since writing it I've had a weakness in the (very common) style of
having a heirarchy of autonomous projects, each with their own lib\ and
build\ directories.

If you want the output of all the builds to end up in one place, and the
libraries from one project acting as inputs to another, it makes more sense
to have single build/ and lib/ directories at the top of the heirarchy. But
if the sub project files are intended to be standalone they can't tell where
the top of the heirarchy is.

The solution pointed out to me is to have a standard practise of defining a
base directory in a property
    <property name="dir.base" location="." />
then define the subdirs relative to it
    <property name="dir.build" location="{dir.base}/build" />
    <property name="dir.lib" location="{dir.base}/lib" />

If a parent project wants to move the lib and build directories upstream,
then it just makes its own declaration of the base directory and
'immutability propagation' for want of a better name ensures that the sub
projects pick up the change.

Does that seem a) workable and b) reasonable? If so I will submit it as a
diff to my own document.

-steve

[FYI] Ant and NetBeans IDE

[David Dabbs <dd...@zefer.com>]

Looks like Ant is top 'o the enhancements list for their next release.


1. NetBeans 3.2

1.1. Must-have Features

1.1.1. Up-to-date Ant Implementation

This is more of an ongoing requirement; the module should always bundle the
most recent released Ant version. It should be easy and documented how to
upgrade to a different Ant version in-place. Also it would be desirable to
use the same XML parser as is provided by the NetBeans core, to avoid
conflicts.


David

RE: documentation (and a RESUBMIT)

[Scott Stirling <ss...@mediaone.net>]

Nice doc, dude.  I read this.  It's well written, clear.  Bit of a tease
with the mention of XSL to gen build files, but OK.  It'd make a nice
overview doc for practical applications and usage patterns in medium to
large projects.

Scott Stirling
West Newton, MA


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Loughran [mailto:steve_l@iseran.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 7:22 PM
> To: ant
> Subject: documentation (and a RESUBMIT)
>
[snip]
> I am resubmitting my document on how to use ant in a production system; I
> hope it can be a ) committed and b) expanded on by people doing
> more complex
> builds than me. Details on how to use XSLT with could be a special chapter
> perhaps.
[snip]