RE: local properties@apache.org

[Steve Loughran <st...@apache.org>]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 11:26:56 +0200, Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org> 
wrote:
 > Hmm, ask Steve how long a SmartFrog instance is running.  And AFAIU
 > NetBeans 4 runs a single instance of Ant as long as the IDE is
 > running.  This may really lead to quite a few properties at the end of
 > the day, in particular if you need to pass them to a forked JUnit VM
 > or down to a child build with inheritall set to true.
 >

smartfrog processes can run for months, but that is irrelevant as they 
are their own processes, to which you deploy to using RMI or soon SOAP. 
The Ant tasks just do that binding for you and can let you inline a 
smartfrog deployment descriptor, propagate system settings etc, so you 
can deploy during build and test.

The longest running stuff out there is GridAnt, which uses ant as a 
workflow engine
    http://www-unix.globus.org/cog/projects/gridant/
When I first heard this I was tempted to denounce it publicly as wrong 
(and I think it is somewhat aberrant), but Gregor did put a lot of 
effort into this and I forgive him. GridAnt can run the same project for 
days. As to why it is mistaken, I think it is too brittle. The workflow 
is managed client side (in smartfrog any workflows are hosted on the 
server farm), so if your laptop goes off line, away goes your 3 week 
simulation of positron flux density near a black hole, or whatever it 
was you were doing (*)

You might think a multi-day build is out of bounds, but long-running 
test systems are possible, like cruise control for example. And then 
there are those things that use ant as a launcher. ...

-steve


(*) on this topic British Aerospace are giving a public talk on our site 
next week on A380 engineering; I think they use grid systems to do a lot 
fo their simulations.  All welcome.





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