resursive ant build: recommendation?

[Suu Quan <sq...@wwc.com>]

I am solliciting recommendation from this group on whether recursive
build.xml files is a recommended pattern.

In make, it is a common practice to build a makefile for each
package/subpackage/component. Then at the upper level, you invoke the
sub-level makefiles.

For a not-so-clean design, compilation dependencies force the build system
to first create a dependency list, usually creating makefiles dynamically,
then executing them in a known order. This occupies a good 20-40% of the
build time.

With Ant and Javac, it seems that I can get away with one toplevel build
file and skip that intermediate step of finding dependencies.
Is this the recommendation for Java type of builds?

The above is possible, I think, due to capability of javac to resolve
dependencies. (correct me  please if I'm wrong, even slightly)
What about other languages: C, C++ ...

Thanks in advance

Re: resursive ant build: recommendation?

["Larry V. Streepy, Jr." <st...@healthlanguage.com>]

>From my experience, on a moderately complex EJB project (close to 700
source files), I have found that a single build.xml file has worked
wonderfully.

As you mention, javac (or in our case jikes) can easily handle the
compilation of our entire source tree in a single execution in just a
couple of minutes.  That alone made it worth ditching the "make depend"
followed by "make build" process.

I know this pattern probably won't work if you have true nested
"projects", but for us it worked very well.

Suu Quan wrote:
> 
> I am solliciting recommendation from this group on whether recursive
> build.xml files is a recommended pattern.
> 
> In make, it is a common practice to build a makefile for each
> package/subpackage/component. Then at the upper level, you invoke the
> sub-level makefiles.
> 
> For a not-so-clean design, compilation dependencies force the build system
> to first create a dependency list, usually creating makefiles dynamically,
> then executing them in a known order. This occupies a good 20-40% of the
> build time.
> 
> With Ant and Javac, it seems that I can get away with one toplevel build
> file and skip that intermediate step of finding dependencies.
> Is this the recommendation for Java type of builds?
> 
> The above is possible, I think, due to capability of javac to resolve
> dependencies. (correct me  please if I'm wrong, even slightly)
> What about other languages: C, C++ ...
> 
> Thanks in advance

-- 
Larry V. Streepy, Jr.
Chief Technical Officer and VP of Engineering

Health Language, Inc.  -- "We speak the language of healthcare"

970/626-5028 (office)           mailto:streepy@healthlanguage.com
970/626-4425 (fax)              http://www.healthlanguage.com