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Posted to dev@ant.apache.org by Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> on 2003/11/04 23:09:43 UTC
Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Here is the offending page from Brent's book. I think it will be on the
MSDN web site before long, as it is the chapter promised this month -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/books/rector/default.aspx
I have added my commentary. This is the last paragraph on chapter 2,
just after a critique of make. My comments are in brackets.
MSBuild vs Ant
===============
A similar frequently asked question is why develop a new XML-based build
system when there's an existing system called Ant? Ant is a Java, open
source build system from Apache.org that uses XML-based configuration
files. There's a .NET port called Nant from nant.sourceforge.net as
well. On the surface, MSBuild and Ant/Nant seem similar. Both tools use
XML as their project serialization format, and both tools use tasks as
their atomic unit of build operation. However, a deeper look reveals
differences in the two tools, some of which I describe here:
1. Ant does not provide built-in target dependency analysis -a
requirement for a scalable build system
[This has no impact on build files, merely effort to write new tasks. We
do leave it to tasks, but they get to implement their own logic. Having
to implement it yourself adds work to the task developers, but they get
to write task specific rules. Like, for example, <jspc> knows the name
mangling rules to go from .jsp files to valid java source files, and ftp
knows about ftp sites and time zones.]
2. Ant does not have a clear concept of a project manifest -a necessity
to develop additional tools to process the output of a build system
[Ant has a clear concept of a project manifest: the build file. This is
well-formed XML, and none of the many IDEs that use Ant have complained
yet. What Ant does not do is provide a schema as that would destroy its
extensibility model.]
3. Ant does not have a normalized concept of task inputs and outputs; a
necessity for a build system to support intra-task communication.
[we do have common data structures, like fileset, but to do piping we
may need to introduce more concepts.]
4. Unlike Ant, MSbuild is a secure build engine. MSBuild introduces the
notion of partially trusted builds, project level sandboxing and task
level sandboxing.
[Ant is a secure build engine. Most people never do this, but when Ant
runs inside Tomcat, it is sandbox mode. Other embedded uses of Ant would
be expected to use the appropriate security model. Note also that Ant
permits one to set the security permissions on code when using the
<java> task, so one can run code in a sandbox from inside Ant.]
5. MSbuild has a richer extensibility model than ant. MSBuild uses
constructs not available in Java. Examples range from the ability to
batch tasks intelligently, or to allowing custom tasks to specify
attributes as optional or required.
[Ant has a richer extensibility model than MSBuild. Ant lets third
parties add new conditions, selectors and datatypes as well as tasks.
Ant allows custom tasks to support arbitrary XML elements inside the
task. Finally, being open source (BSD license), Ant can be extended in
ways that we cannot imagine. Any part of it can be reused or changed to
meet developer needs.]
6. Ant does not have the ability to import (macro insert) parts of the
project file -a necessity to factor the build system into maintainable
reusable pieces and a fundamental requirement for enterprise build
systems.
[Ant has the ability to import (macro insert) parts of the build file
using the <import> task, which even handles target name conflicts. It
also lets you invoke ant builds in other files using <ant> and <subant>.
We also support XML entity inclusion for inserting arbitrary text]
---
There is something deeply misguided about faulting Ant for its lack of
scalability or extensiblity. Ant is intrinsically more extensible, being
open source, and its scalability is something learned over time from
being used in big projects. I can only conclude that Mr Rector's deep
look at ant didn't go beyond asking some MS marketing weasel why MSBuild
was better than [N]Ant.
If you are going to criticise ant, criticise it where it is weak, like
having inconsistent naming of attributes, no consistent failonerror
settings, and lots of list-like/set-like types with no underlying class
other than java.lang.Object. But dont pick on scalability or
extensibility, that is just picking an argument you intend to lose.
------------------
What are we going to do now. I am feeling ruthless.
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Re: Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Posted by Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>.
Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Nov 2003, Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
>
>>Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> Oh, Latin is my third language (and I never had the opportunity to
> tell girls I was interested in what they had to say in Latin 8-).
I believe there are still some parts of switzerland and a bit of the
Dolomites near Cortina that still speak a derivative of latin, if you
feel like trying your luck.
>>now, they dont have to care what I say, but we do have the option of
>>pulling all .NET support from ant1.6...
>
>
> I don't think there is such a significant user base for them, is
> there? You and me, but most .NET developers who are not doing
> heterogeneous builds will pick NAnt today (or VS.NET).
I probably would too, and when vs.net shipped would use that, simply
because integration with the IDE and code you are working on makes
sense. I encountered a fair bit of resistance in getting everyone on the
team here to install a modern JRE so they could run Ant to build the C++
stuff. Some people still have issues with CppUnit too.
and that is going to be one of the hard things to change with VS.net.
Its very-excellent debugger does bias people towards debug-based
development, rather than writing the tests and tracking down problems by
writing new tests. In a way, the limitations of the Java IDEs -no
dominant tool, historically weak debuggers (better now), made us use Ant
and JUnit because there was no way to get things working otherwise. .NET
does have a single IDE with good debugging, so people have been able to
struggle along with a non-scalable, non-automated process. Or as I call,
it "edit-and-continue" programming.
If I ever get the time, I plan to use the .NET tasks with Axis to do
better client side interop testing. This is why the <wsdlToDotnet> task
is there. I may need <nunit> and <al> shortly too.
-steve
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Re: Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Posted by Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>.
On Wed, 05 Nov 2003, Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
> Stefan Bodewig wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Nov 2003, Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
> Stefan. I am disappointed.
Well, I knew that DD would read my mail and simply waited for him to
wake up. I didn't expect you to do such a great job, thanks.
> I thought it was us british citizens that were meant to be brought
> up not speaking the languages of our neighbours :(.
My closest neighbors speak Dutch and I do understand it, but wouldn't
try to speak or even write in dutch. This is certainly not due to our
school system, I simply watched Dutch television a lot in the 70s and
80s. And then there are those ritual shopping trips to Venlo or
Roermond, you know.
> Still, I guess English does make more sense as a second language
> than, say, Russian, to name one of the languages I was nominally
> taught.
Depending on which part of Germany you've been born in, you would have
been taught either English or Russian as your second language. By now
English is the default, but there are schools that will let you chose
a different language. Florian (our son who's just started school)
will be taught English starting with his third year in school - we
didn't get our second language before the fifth year when I was in
school.
Oh, Latin is my third language (and I never had the opportunity to
tell girls I was interested in what they had to say in Latin 8-).
> I think that is why they arent going to do C++ support; if you have
> to list dependencies by hand, stick to automake.
listing dependencies by hand is the biggest shortcomming of file based
dependencies IMHO. And just think of <copy>'s overwite attribute.
> >>What are we going to do now. I am feeling ruthless.
>
> > Wait until it apperas in MSDN to address it? Address it right
> > now?
> no, we are going to our retaliation in early, as they say in
> rugby. I will send some emails to the relevant authorities.
OK, let's see.
I should use the time in which my blog is ranked first by Google when
searching for Ant and MSBuild, I guess. I'm even on the first page
for MSBuild as the only query parameter 8-)
> now, they dont have to care what I say, but we do have the option of
> pulling all .NET support from ant1.6...
I don't think there is such a significant user base for them, is
there? You and me, but most .NET developers who are not doing
heterogeneous builds will pick NAnt today (or VS.NET).
Stefan
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Re: Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Posted by Gus Heck <gu...@cognition.olin.edu>.
> now, they dont have to care what I say, but we do have the option of
> pulling all .NET support from ant1.6...we will just have to see if
> that matters to them. It'll be an interesting test of conflict of the
> tactical 'get .net developers today' over the strategic 'own the
> developers forever'.
>
I think they would cheer if we took out .net support. It would give them
another selling point for msbuild. The thing they hate most is
competition. Leave it in and they will be more annoyed :).
-Gus
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Re: Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Posted by Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>.
Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Nov 2003, Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
>
>>Here is the offending page from Brent's book.
>
>
> I stumbled over it yesterday[1] - the snippet you post - here
> <http://www.dotnetguru.org/articles/pdc2003/pdc2003v2.htm>.
>
> As I don't speak french I've been unable to understand the context - I
> was planing to ask the author of that article to translate it for me
> and then answer it as well.
Stefan. I am disappointed. I thought it was us british citizens that
were meant to be brought up not speaking the languages of our neighbours
:(. Still, I guess English does make more sense as a second language
than, say, Russian, to name one of the languages I was nominally taught.
Here goes then, bearing in mind I havent spoken french since '99 and my
language skills there were mainly focused around safety warnings to do
with antimatter and radiation "Danger, risque de radiation", bicicyle
parts and telling french girls that I am very interested in what they
have to say...
The author says that it was a 1h15 presentation about Ant. It was
clearly apparent that MS build is a good copy of Ant and also Nant.
If the two speakers had started their talk by acknowledging that they
supported the efforts of the NAnt community and that they participated
in the development of the framework, they could still [equally] have
justified their decision to completely rewrite it for the reasons listed
below.
concerning the techicanl details, the notion of Target is the same.
Tasks are an equally integral part of the project. The plagiarism (sorry
to use the term, but it is clearly the case) goes up to the API in the
naming of the tasks, and the manner of using the properties [maybe
attributes] is absolutely identical. But where are the differences, you
ask me? Well, the developers had the idea to add functionality that is
not in Ant to date. This is all explained the book "Introducing
Longhorn" that was distributed free to participants during the conference
[the bogus claims reprinted]
We leave you to form your own opinion on the subject. The positive side
is that an Ant developer [user?] will not be really, but also really,
not lost with MsBuild.
[I havent been able to really translate that last sentence. I would
guess it means that an ant user will feel at home with MSBuild]
>
> Let me add to your comments.
>
>
>>1. Ant does not provide built-in target dependency analysis -a
>>requirement for a scalable build system
>
>
> <http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/stories/10575/>
>
> And your case where name mangling is more difficult than the current
> engine knows is a good point as well. We have a similar case in
> <rmic>, where the Weblogic compiler adapter produces a different
> result from Sun's.
>
> And then there is the case of dependencies between classes. If
> superclass and subclass end up in different assemblies and you change
> the superclass, the naive target dependency analysis will not
> recompile the subclass. And people will never think of doing
> something like the <depend> task as this is done by MSBuild.
no. I think that is why they arent going to do C++ support; if you have
to list dependencies by hand, stick to automake. Oh, wait, they dont
support that, do they.
>
>
>>3. Ant does not have a normalized concept of task inputs and
>>outputs; a necessity for a build system to support intra-task
>>communication.
>
>
> We do have references, we just don't use them as much as we could
> <http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/stories/10636/>.
>
> I'm trying to get my thoughts on this into a better shape and will
> have a proposal for the 1.7 timeframe.
This sounds interesting.
>
>
>>4. Unlike Ant, MSbuild is a secure build engine. MSBuild introduces
>>the notion of partially trusted builds, project level sandboxing and
>>task level sandboxing.
>
>
> I couldn't find anything about this in the public docs about MSBuild.
me neither. Which is why this smacks of a briefing rather than brent
doing his own research.
>>5. MSbuild has a richer extensibility model than ant.
>
>
> I was laughing out loud on reading this.
yes, I thought maybe it was a typo. You dont get more extensible than
having no schema and the complete source to play with.
>
>
>>6. Ant does not have the ability to import (macro insert) parts of
>>the project file
>
>
> It is fair to say that this is true for all released versions of Ant
> (so let's get 1.6 out of door quickly ;-). And only if you deny
> entities, of course.
yes, but MSBuild is a year from shipping. They should really be
comparing msbuild to Ant1.7 release; for now 1.6 vs MSBuild beta is the
best comparision.
>>What are we going to do now. I am feeling ruthless.
>
>
> Wait until it apperas in MSDN to address it? Address it right now?
> Judging from my blog's referers, people are searching for infomation
> on MSBuild a lot ATM, so we may as well set the record straight right
> from the beginning.
no, we are going to our retaliation in early, as they say in rugby. I
will send some emails to the relevant authorities. One nice thing about
MS compared to Sun is that they are very easily contacted, and usually
pretty responsive. If they dont respond, that is when you have to worry.
It usually means they dont want to tell you something bad.
now, they dont have to care what I say, but we do have the option of
pulling all .NET support from ant1.6...we will just have to see if that
matters to them. It'll be an interesting test of conflict of the
tactical 'get .net developers today' over the strategic 'own the
developers forever'.
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Re: Brent Rector on Msbuild vs Ant
Posted by Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>.
On Tue, 04 Nov 2003, Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com> wrote:
> Here is the offending page from Brent's book.
I stumbled over it yesterday[1] - the snippet you post - here
<http://www.dotnetguru.org/articles/pdc2003/pdc2003v2.htm>.
As I don't speak french I've been unable to understand the context - I
was planing to ask the author of that article to translate it for me
and then answer it as well.
Let me add to your comments.
> 1. Ant does not provide built-in target dependency analysis -a
> requirement for a scalable build system
<http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/stories/10575/>
And your case where name mangling is more difficult than the current
engine knows is a good point as well. We have a similar case in
<rmic>, where the Weblogic compiler adapter produces a different
result from Sun's.
And then there is the case of dependencies between classes. If
superclass and subclass end up in different assemblies and you change
the superclass, the naive target dependency analysis will not
recompile the subclass. And people will never think of doing
something like the <depend> task as this is done by MSBuild.
> 3. Ant does not have a normalized concept of task inputs and
> outputs; a necessity for a build system to support intra-task
> communication.
We do have references, we just don't use them as much as we could
<http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/stories/10636/>.
I'm trying to get my thoughts on this into a better shape and will
have a proposal for the 1.7 timeframe.
> 4. Unlike Ant, MSbuild is a secure build engine. MSBuild introduces
> the notion of partially trusted builds, project level sandboxing and
> task level sandboxing.
I couldn't find anything about this in the public docs about MSBuild.
> 5. MSbuild has a richer extensibility model than ant.
I was laughing out loud on reading this.
> 6. Ant does not have the ability to import (macro insert) parts of
> the project file
It is fair to say that this is true for all released versions of Ant
(so let's get 1.6 out of door quickly ;-). And only if you deny
entities, of course.
> What are we going to do now. I am feeling ruthless.
Wait until it apperas in MSDN to address it? Address it right now?
Judging from my blog's referers, people are searching for infomation
on MSBuild a lot ATM, so we may as well set the record straight right
from the beginning.
Stefan
Footnotes:
[1] While googling for msbuild and ant - I wanted to see why my blog
gets so many hits 8-)
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