Return-Path: Delivered-To: apmail-jakarta-ant-dev-archive@apache.org Received: (qmail 27272 invoked from network); 9 Jul 2002 16:16:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO nagoya.betaversion.org) (192.18.49.131) by daedalus.apache.org with SMTP; 9 Jul 2002 16:16:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 28222 invoked by uid 97); 9 Jul 2002 16:17:00 -0000 Delivered-To: qmlist-jakarta-archive-ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org Received: (qmail 28206 invoked by uid 97); 9 Jul 2002 16:17:00 -0000 Mailing-List: contact ant-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Help: List-Post: List-Id: "Ant Developers List" Reply-To: "Ant Developers List" Delivered-To: mailing list ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org Received: (qmail 28192 invoked by uid 98); 9 Jul 2002 16:16:59 -0000 X-Antivirus: nagoya (v4198 created Apr 24 2002) Message-ID: <117e01c22764$3cbae790$1219570f@ranier> From: "Steve Loughran" To: "Ant Developers List" References: Subject: Re: Ant 2 et al. Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 09:18:18 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 X-Spam-Rating: daedalus.apache.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N X-Spam-Rating: daedalus.apache.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Skeet" To: "Ant Developers List" Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:55 AM Subject: RE: Ant 2 et al. >Don't take this as knocking Ant in general - it does its job amazingly well, and the "mess" is, I suspect, a >necessary byproduct of backwards compatibility and the evolutionary model. I just wouldn't hold the >codebase up as a paragon of virtue in itself. >(Mind you, I haven't looked at the other Jakarta projects - you may well be right about it being the cleanest, >and that just doesn't mean it's actually clean :) As someone who has seen the NT codebase, I must observe that backwards compatibility is ugly, especially when glued onto a fairly clean underlying system, but it tends to help with success. And as NT shows, you can move a lot of the compatibility ugliness from the core of the system to a higher level layer, leaving the core much cleaner. -steve -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: For additional commands, e-mail: