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Message-ID: <39F86A21.9A1E9341@i2.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 12:30:09 -0500
From: Ken Wood <kwood@i2.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: Re: Role of scripts [was Re: increment task]
References: <20001026171423.2732.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com>
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Diane, I think you're missing the point, or am I...

No one wants Ant to be an elist tool.

It was designed to be a JAVA program to build
java. It was designed to be extended using java because 
that was the original CONCEPT - a platform
independent build system that was extensible. 
In fact, the scripting support it has was made possible 
by by writing, in java, a script task.

It's a testimony to Ant's power that people
are finding it useful for many things.
Extending it with scripting languages
seems counter to the original intent. 
Yet a comment like:

> > --- Patrick Beard <beard@netscape.com> wrote:
> > > Being able to extend Ant's capabilities using Java is certainly a
> > > great thing, but having that be the only extension mechanism is
> > > limiting.

seems to imply that java as an extension
mechanism is not enough. I think it is enough.
That's all the point I was trying to make.
I'm not against using the script task
to gain additional benefit.

I'm sorry you don't have time to learn
java. Guess what? I don't have time
to learning a scripting language...
In fact, right now, I don't even have time
to try to write a java task to do a few
things I need, so I fall back on 'exec'
to get the job done today, and later on
I'll see if I have time to do it better.