Costs of using ant as a scripting language?

[Nicholas Christopher <nw...@flashcom.net>]

I've use ANT now very happily for build, test and deploy of a Java app across
windows and linux. Usually my stuff deploys both a shell script and batch file
for launching the app. What I wonder is why shouldn't I just launch the app from
an ant task?  Let ANT worry about the script & batch issue. I know that it's
completely viable (I do it for testing) but I'm just wondering what the
overhead/cost is of launching an app from ANT vs a script?  Any thoughts?

Re: Costs of using ant as a scripting language?

[Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>]

At 12:14  17/12/00 -0500, Nicholas Christopher wrote:
>
>I've use ANT now very happily for build, test and deploy of a Java app across
>windows and linux. Usually my stuff deploys both a shell script and batch
file
>for launching the app. What I wonder is why shouldn't I just launch the
app from
>an ant task?  Let ANT worry about the script & batch issue. I know that it's
>completely viable (I do it for testing) but I'm just wondering what the
>overhead/cost is of launching an app from ANT vs a script?  Any thoughts?

I say go for it if you can. Java/Ant does not have access to some OS
specific settings easily (ie environment variables/specific commands etc)
thou changes are in progress to fix this. If you can live without
env-variables then go for it otherwise you may want to wait for next
release (or grab ant from CVS)


Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
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