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Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 10:16:19 +1000
To: ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org
From: Peter Donald <donaldp@locus.apache.org>
Subject: RE: Role of scripts [was Re: increment task]
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At 04:25  26/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Since everyone else has made some comments, I felt "what the heck", opinions
>are cheap.
>
>(1) I feel Ant should have the "on-the-fly" flexibility scripts give.
>Having to write a new task definition just to do some small bit of
>functionality, above and beyond a current task is not feasible whether you
>know Java or not.

I agree - to a degree. Allowing scripts into core means that script files
are not longer trivial to read and build (and are also considerably slower
to interpret) and in the same position as make - only experts can hack at
it. Then again I really like functionality offered by scripts - so I am not
sure which is best path to jump on ;)

>(2) The immaturity (and it is immature) of Ant means that not every task is
>complete.  Some things we need to be patient about.  EJBJAR is *far* from
>being complete, in my opinion.  I need <exec> and <script> to do things I
>can't do in EJBJAR.  When EJBJAR has all the features I want (and I'm trying
>to add them during my oh-so large amounts of free time) then I can ditch the
><script>...because I *want* no script in there.

I agree ;)
(Not about ejbjar as I not use it but about ant not being fully matured yet
;])

>(3) Scripts (and exec to some extent) break the intent of Ant and XML.  You
>can't argue against that point very much when you think about XML.  XML is
>an element based file meant to uniformly describe data/information.  Exec
>follows this pattern, so it's excused.  Script works more like HTML, where
>tags simply describe how that which is in-between should be read.  The long
>rope of XML is being tied into a noose if you follow that path.

this is what I fear

Cheers,

Pete

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