Re: Generic tasks for idl2java, javac ... (was Re: A question about "available" ...)

[Ken Wood <kw...@i2.com>]

And, to add fuel to the fire, in JDK 1.3, Sun's idl2java
has been replaced with "idlj". See their web page for
details.

My personal take is that there are so many ways to go
here that finding common ground may be hard. I'm perfectly
happy to have the standard Ant tasks handle 80% of the work,
and then handle the messy stuff on a one-on-one basis. For
example, I'm happy to use the "java" task to invoke the
particular vendor's idl2java tool that we use. 

Perhaps with time the numerous ways to do idl2java will
be thinned out to a manageable set. Until then, is it
worth the effort to try to have an all encompassing
idl2java task? I think not. Each Ant user is probably
using only one idl2java tool, so for his/her site,
they can handle it with either the 'java' task, or
'exec', or defining a new task.

RE: Generic tasks for idl2java, javac ... (was Re: A question about "available" ...)

[Vitaly Stulsky <vi...@yahoo.com>]

> My personal take is that there are so many ways to go
> here that finding common ground may be hard. I'm perfectly
> happy to have the standard Ant tasks handle 80% of the work,
> and then handle the messy stuff on a one-on-one basis. For
> example, I'm happy to use the "java" task to invoke the
> particular vendor's idl2java tool that we use. 
> Perhaps with time the numerous ways to do idl2java will
> be thinned out to a manageable set. Until then, is it
> worth the effort to try to have an all encompassing
> idl2java task? I think not. Each Ant user is probably
> using only one idl2java tool, so for his/her site,
> they can handle it with either the 'java' task, or
> 'exec', or defining a new task.

Okay, but every programmer, who wants to compile IDL 
using his compiler has to write his own taskdef. This work
will be performed by multiple ANT users and demands a lot
of efforts and resources. Yes, I understand, it is simple to write 
my own taskdef, and when I need other to write other. But
I prefer to reuse software and I don't want to perform work,
which was already done.
IMHO if we'll follow your words, we'll have to remove JIKES
compilation from javac taskdef. It is possible to run JIKES
from EXEC taskdef. But it isn't good way cause we need
to switch between the compilers. What we have to do if 
on the market we will see one more compiler?

With the suggested approach I tried to propose set of taskdefs
which will be:
1) Reusable 
2) Maintainable
3) Extendable
Current approach with javac taskdef looks good for two or three 
compilers, but as I think,  we have to be ready for extending
this task for supporting 10+ compilers. idlToJava taskdef could
be good enough to evaluate some approaches for tasks like this.

Thank you in advance,
Vitaly




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