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Posted to dev@ant.apache.org by Kev Jackson <ke...@it.fts-vn.com> on 2005/07/26 04:52:18 UTC

Java Development with Ant

Hi all,

I'm preparing a talk for the developers here in Vietnam about how to use 
Ant to build software (mainly Java, but you know there's the .net tasks 
too).  I have the main body of the presentation completed, but I wanted 
to include some of the more esoteric things you can do with Ant (not the 
videogame!).  I noticed on the Manning web-site that Steve mentioned 
that he has slides available showing imports, macrodefs etc, these would 
be incerdibly hadny if he still has them (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

I cover:
- Ant versus Make
- Ant instead of IDE compilation
- Continuous Integration (CruiseControl)
- Common tasks (clean, compile, jar etc)
- Server-side stuff (ftp, deploy etc)

Anything else I should include for first-timers?  My aim is to help the 
developers realise that although it is possible to work as a team with 
each person compiling in their own ide, that Ant simplifies things and 
allows them to re-use the build script on other projects etc.  I've got 
another talk on unit testing coming up (I've been here nearly 10 months 
and I've only seen 1 unit test and there was nothing tested in it).  
Needless to say, the working practices are similar to what I'd expect in 
the 80's (SourceSafe as version control, everyone locks files, Waterfall 
as the process, massive investment in design up front, testing is done 
by teams of bored people etc etc).

Kev

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Phil Weighill Smith <ph...@volantis.com>.
You may well have already included this sort of thing, but I'd cover
(not really esoteric):

      * Immutability and overriding of properties (an often mis-
        understood aspect)
      * Conditional targets
      * Usage of id/refid
      * Multiple source tree support (e.g. for production and test code)
      * Sub-builds (e.g. via subant and ant tasks)
      * Test execution and reporting
      * PropertySet
      * FilterChains and FilterReaders
      * Selectors
      * File Mappers (perhaps with multiple mappings)
      * Availability of third-party extensions (tasks, such as Ant
        Contrib)

Phil :n)

On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 09:52 +0700, Kev Jackson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm preparing a talk for the developers here in Vietnam about how to use 
> Ant to build software (mainly Java, but you know there's the .net tasks 
> too).  I have the main body of the presentation completed, but I wanted 
> to include some of the more esoteric things you can do with Ant (not the 
> videogame!).  I noticed on the Manning web-site that Steve mentioned 
> that he has slides available showing imports, macrodefs etc, these would 
> be incerdibly hadny if he still has them (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
> 
> I cover:
> - Ant versus Make
> - Ant instead of IDE compilation
> - Continuous Integration (CruiseControl)
> - Common tasks (clean, compile, jar etc)
> - Server-side stuff (ftp, deploy etc)
> 
> Anything else I should include for first-timers?  My aim is to help the 
> developers realise that although it is possible to work as a team with 
> each person compiling in their own ide, that Ant simplifies things and 
> allows them to re-use the build script on other projects etc.  I've got 
> another talk on unit testing coming up (I've been here nearly 10 months 
> and I've only seen 1 unit test and there was nothing tested in it).  
> Needless to say, the working practices are similar to what I'd expect in 
> the 80's (SourceSafe as version control, everyone locks files, Waterfall 
> as the process, massive investment in design up front, testing is done 
> by teams of bored people etc etc).
> 
> Kev
> 
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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Emmanouil Batsis <Em...@eurodyn.com>.
Craeg Strong wrote:

> > Although it will only interest a small number of developers, i would 
> happily contribute a "ecmascript/javascript with Ant" including JSdoc 
> (similar with javadoc) and JSLint (instead of checkstyle) integration, 
> unit test etc.
> > Manos
>
> Yes, Please!
>
> I am involved  with a large  project that is heavily using AJAX 
> technology.  The technology is cool, interactive, slick..... and so 
> far totally undocumented and untested.
> I believe your information could really help some of the folks out 
> there (like us) who are struggling with this stuff. 



Untill i get to actually write a tutorial or something, you may find 
sarissa's build.xml [1]  or the whole project usefull (the distribution 
does not have build related stuff in it). And since you do AJAX, you 
will probably find sarissa usefull as well. Documentation [2] is build 
with JSDoc through Ant. Feedback is welcome.


[1] 
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/sarissa/sarissa/build.xml?view=markup
[2] http://sarissa.sourceforge.net/doc/

hth,

Manos

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Craeg Strong <cs...@arielpartners.com>.
 > Although it will only interest a small number of developers, i would 
happily contribute a "ecmascript/javascript with Ant" including JSdoc 
(similar with javadoc) and JSLint (instead of checkstyle) integration, 
unit test etc.
 > Manos

Yes, Please!

I am involved  with a large  project that is heavily using AJAX 
technology.  
The technology is cool, interactive, slick..... and so far totally 
undocumented and untested.
I believe your information could really help some of the folks out there 
(like us) who are struggling with this stuff.

my 2c,

--Craeg


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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Emmanouil Batsis <Em...@eurodyn.com>.
Steve Loughran wrote:

> Actually, maybe we should put together some official ant team 
> presentations, for use in in-house or external talks, something like 
> the following set. This could be something to get the user community 
> involved in too...
>
> -intro to ant
> -why testing matters more than you think
> -whats new in ant1.7 (the apachecon slides are this)
> -.net with ant
> -C++ with ant
> -Ant XML processing
> -script in ant
> -continuous integration 



Although it will only interest a small number of developers, i would 
happily contribute a "ecmascript/javascript with Ant" including JSdoc 
(similar with javadoc) and JSLint (instead of checkstyle) integration, 
unit test etc.

Manos

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Steve Loughran <st...@apache.org>.
Erik Hatcher wrote:
> 
> On Jul 26, 2005, at 5:30 AM, Steve Loughran wrote:
> 
>> Actually, maybe we should put together some official ant team  
>> presentations, for use in in-house or external talks, something  like 
>> the following set. This could be something to get the user  community 
>> involved in too...
>>
>> -intro to ant
>> -why testing matters more than you think
>> -whats new in ant1.7 (the apachecon slides are this)
>> -.net with ant
>> -C++ with ant
>> -Ant XML processing
>> -script in ant
>> -continuous integration
>>
> 
> I'd be happy to contribute the slides I've done on Ant to various  
> symposiums and conferences.  The thing is, though, that slides are  
> mostly useless - it's the presenter that makes the difference :)
> 
> Where should these slides (in PDF format would probably be best) go?

open office format would be the one to use. That way they can be 
maintained, customised for individual presentations, etc. It also means 
that visio inserts (as I have been known to use) are out too.

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Erik Hatcher <er...@ehatchersolutions.com>.
On Jul 26, 2005, at 5:30 AM, Steve Loughran wrote:
> Actually, maybe we should put together some official ant team  
> presentations, for use in in-house or external talks, something  
> like the following set. This could be something to get the user  
> community involved in too...
>
> -intro to ant
> -why testing matters more than you think
> -whats new in ant1.7 (the apachecon slides are this)
> -.net with ant
> -C++ with ant
> -Ant XML processing
> -script in ant
> -continuous integration
>

I'd be happy to contribute the slides I've done on Ant to various  
symposiums and conferences.  The thing is, though, that slides are  
mostly useless - it's the presenter that makes the difference :)

Where should these slides (in PDF format would probably be best) go?

     Erik


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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Steve Loughran <st...@apache.org>.
Kev Jackson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm preparing a talk for the developers here in Vietnam about how to use 
> Ant to build software (mainly Java, but you know there's the .net tasks 
> too).  I have the main body of the presentation completed, but I wanted 
> to include some of the more esoteric things you can do with Ant (not the 
> videogame!).  I noticed on the Manning web-site that Steve mentioned 
> that he has slides available showing imports, macrodefs etc, these would 
> be incerdibly hadny if he still has them (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Those are the apachecon europe 2005 slides, and they are In the post.I 
will put them up online once I have PDF creation and layout right; the 
visio image is causing problems with some PDF viewers.

Take the presetdef/scriptdef/macrodef/import slides at the very least, 
esp. the one that shows import inheritance. Assume an ASF or creative 
commons license.

Actually, maybe we should put together some official ant team 
presentations, for use in in-house or external talks, something like the 
following set. This could be something to get the user community 
involved in too...

-intro to ant
-why testing matters more than you think
-whats new in ant1.7 (the apachecon slides are this)
-.net with ant
-C++ with ant
-Ant XML processing
-script in ant
-continuous integration


> 
> I cover:
> - Ant versus Make
> - Ant instead of IDE compilation
> - Continuous Integration (CruiseControl)
> - Common tasks (clean, compile, jar etc)
> - Server-side stuff (ftp, deploy etc)
> 
> Anything else I should include for first-timers?  My aim is to help the 
> developers realise that although it is possible to work as a team with 
> each person compiling in their own ide, that Ant simplifies things and 
> allows them to re-use the build script on other projects etc.  I've got 
> another talk on unit testing coming up (I've been here nearly 10 months 
> and I've only seen 1 unit test and there was nothing tested in it).  

uh-oh.

Getting people to embrace unit testing is hard, very hard, unless 
management come down and say write unit tests. the reason being is that 
the benefits dont show up immediately -at first it is extra effort and 
delays above coding, tests are somehow viewed as less worthy than real 
code, etc, etc.

> Needless to say, the working practices are similar to what I'd expect in 
> the 80's (SourceSafe as version control, everyone locks files, Waterfall 
> as the process, massive investment in design up front, testing is done 
> by teams of bored people etc etc).

upfront design is always useful :) I dont consider VSS to be an SCM 
tool, more a pretend SCM tool. which is worse, because you think you 
have your source safe, and then suddenly you find out you dont...

-steve

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Andrew <al...@starfishzone.com>.
I work in a web agency, here are some of the more esoteric things I have done:

- strictly control access to deployment/live servers; only access to deploy 
is via a series of Ant tasks; limit files that can go live by the use of 
file filters
- promoting reference data from dev > staging databases
- rename thousands of files according to certain glob patterns
- auto-produce change logs (by invoking tools that analyse cvs), including 
this as part of a release
- extract a set of delta changes (between two cvs tags), zip up as a 
"patch", scp to remote host
- parse product catalogue files, convert into various XML formats, dispatch 
by FTP to affiliate partners, record success/fail in a database
- invoking test scripts (note use of try/catch type Ant tasks)

Some of the latter involved writing custom Ant tasks; this is well worth 
the investment, generally - particularly if you want to assure repeatable 
action (and hence quality) by members of a team.  With careful use to 
always use relative paths, a build.xml is totally portable between 
individual's installations.


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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Kev Jackson <ke...@it.fts-vn.com>.
>
> They are at the leading edge then... I have been interviewing 
> candidates for a developer position not later than yesterday and it 
> left me with a bitter test about software process and tools used 
> within a team working...no source control within a team of 15 people 
> (10 dev), etc... all that within the biggest isps and telco in the 
> country. Frankly that scares me to death.
>
> Oh, and when I want to add a tester to a development team some 
> customers tell me, this this is not possible because it will make the 
> cost too high and they are assuming that what developers do is free of 
> defects as they tested it themselves, otherwise that means we don't 
> have good enough people...mm..well.
>
It's really interesting as the people themselves are amazingly 
intelligent, they're pretty much all recent graduates (a couple of older 
developers), and they all have excellent theoretical knowledge of 
programming.  The problem is the practice - most of them could build 
some amazingly funky tools, but the code would be spaghetti and as soon 
as they left the tool would be useless.  It's getting past that mental 
block that they have about team development.  The best of them have 
embraced UP and UML, but personally I have an aversion to gigantic 
processes and bucketloads of docs.  I also pushed for (and got) 
Subversion installed instead of SourceSafe (thankfully).  Still a big 
way to go for the VB programmers, but there are a few C coders whu seem 
to be a little more open to the ideas of builds over make.  Unit testing 
is going to be the real problem :(

Still the talk was a success - didn't cover everything suggested, but 
thanks for the feedback.

Kev

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Re: Java Development with Ant

Posted by Stephane Bailliez <sb...@apache.org>.
Kev Jackson wrote:

> Needless to say, the working practices are similar to what I'd expect 
> in the 80's (SourceSafe as version control, everyone locks files, 
> Waterfall as the process, massive investment in design up front, 
> testing is done by teams of bored people etc etc).

They are at the leading edge then... I have been interviewing candidates 
for a developer position not later than yesterday and it left me with a 
bitter test about software process and tools used within a team 
working...no source control within a team of 15 people (10 dev), etc... 
all that within the biggest isps and telco in the country. Frankly that 
scares me to death.

Oh, and when I want to add a tester to a development team some customers 
tell me, this this is not possible because it will make the cost too 
high and they are assuming that what developers do is free of defects as 
they tested it themselves, otherwise that means we don't have good 
enough people...mm..well.




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