Ant 2.0 vision was Re: PATCH: Attributes of Target can reference properties

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

Conor MacNeill wrote:
>
> MUCH SNIPPED AWAY HERE...
> 
> Personally I too am not happy with the tenor of many discussions on this
> list.
> 
> Conor

Neither am I. Which is why I so rarely contribute. I don't know
where most of you find time to debate so much! I have real work
to get done using Ant as it exists today...

Ant has made my life SO much better and easier. And I have (had?) high
hopes for Ant 2.0 bringing more value. But, it's beginning to look like
there will be an Ant 2.0 discussion in the year 2101 while Ant 1.9999999
is being released....

While the points made by Conor about the committee and the votes are
valid and true, my experience is that many wildly successful innovations
are spearheaded by a visionary and those who agree with that vision. 

Whether he was 'right' or 'wrong', Duncan was the visionary at the
beginning. I can recall when I first looked at Ant that I thought it was
totally
inadequate. I came back to it months later, and found it had improved.
My 
recollection is that the hard work of the committers responding to
suggestions
made it powerful enough to be practical. This was during a period of
'refinement'
to Ant as it was then envisioned. Those people certainly deserve a great
deal of thanks and credit. But, now that we are debating major issues of
a
redesign, rather than incremental touch up of an existing design,
the loss of a 'visionary' to lead is being felt. Specifically,
with the loss of that single vision we are left with a set of competing
visions that show no sign of converging to a single vision we can all
agree to support.

Until we get back to a single vision that we can all agree on, 
these discussions will go on and on, and Ant will
fall further behind where it could be. And it doesn't seem to me
that these discussions are bringing us closer to a single vision...

-ken

P.S. My personal observations is that much of the debate seems to come
down to personal choices about how to use Ant. From my perspective,
all these differing, conflicting points of view are valid. Since Ant is
extensible,
and the source code would be available, can't we wrap this up and agree
to
a core set of functionality that we can all live with? Then people who
want
to do it THIS way or people who want to do it THAT way can customize it
in their shop. Especially if Ant 2.0 makes it easier to customize via
plug-ins...

Re: Ant 2.0 vision was Re: PATCH: Attributes of Target can reference properties

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

On Wed,  4 Jul 2001 12:33, Ken Wood wrote:
> Ant has made my life SO much better and easier. And I have (had?) high
> hopes for Ant 2.0 bringing more value. But, it's beginning to look like
> there will be an Ant 2.0 discussion in the year 2101 while Ant 1.9999999
> is being released....

which is why there are currently forks in progress with possibility of new 
forks in future.

> Whether he was 'right' or 'wrong', Duncan was the visionary at the
> beginning. I can recall when I first looked at Ant that I thought it was
> totally
> inadequate. I came back to it months later, and found it had improved.
> My
> recollection is that the hard work of the committers responding to
> suggestions
> made it powerful enough to be practical. This was during a period of
> 'refinement'
> to Ant as it was then envisioned. Those people certainly deserve a great
> deal of thanks and credit. But, now that we are debating major issues of
> a
> redesign, rather than incremental touch up of an existing design,
> the loss of a 'visionary' to lead is being felt. Specifically,
> with the loss of that single vision we are left with a set of competing
> visions that show no sign of converging to a single vision we can all
> agree to support.
>
> Until we get back to a single vision that we can all agree on,
> these discussions will go on and on, and Ant will
> fall further behind where it could be. And it doesn't seem to me
> that these discussions are bringing us closer to a single vision...

Well I can't speak for the rest of ant-dev but I generally agree for 
JDDs original vision with one exception (I believe properties should allowed 
to be non-strings). The only people I know of who fundamentally disagree with 
JDDs original design are not committers ...

>
> -ken
>
> P.S. My personal observations is that much of the debate seems to come
> down to personal choices about how to use Ant. From my perspective,
> all these differing, conflicting points of view are valid. Since Ant is
> extensible,
> and the source code would be available, can't we wrap this up and agree
> to
> a core set of functionality that we can all live with? Then people who
> want
> to do it THIS way or people who want to do it THAT way can customize it
> in their shop. Especially if Ant 2.0 makes it easier to customize via
> plug-ins...

It will be able to do that however many people believe that ONLY their 
opinion is valid and want the rest of us to take up their flag.

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               |
*-----------------------------------------------------*