Return-Path: Delivered-To: apmail-jakarta-ant-dev-archive@apache.org Received: (qmail 81467 invoked from network); 9 Jul 2002 15:32:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO nagoya.betaversion.org) (192.18.49.131) by daedalus.apache.org with SMTP; 9 Jul 2002 15:32:19 -0000 Received: (qmail 15507 invoked by uid 97); 9 Jul 2002 15:32:29 -0000 Delivered-To: qmlist-jakarta-archive-ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org Received: (qmail 15481 invoked by uid 97); 9 Jul 2002 15:32:28 -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 15465 invoked by uid 98); 9 Jul 2002 15:32:27 -0000 X-Antivirus: nagoya (v4198 created Apr 24 2002) To: "Ant Developers List" Subject: Re: Ant 2 et al. MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Build V60_M13_04302002 Pre-release 2 April 30, 2002 From: dion@multitask.com.au Message-ID: Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 01:45:59 +1000 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on gateway/Multitask Consulting/AU(Release 5.0.8 |June 18, 2001) at 07/10/2002 01:46:19 AM, Serialize complete at 07/10/2002 01:46:19 AM Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=_alternative 005535AF4A256BF1_=" X-Spam-Rating: daedalus.apache.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N X-Spam-Rating: daedalus.apache.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N --=_alternative 005535AF4A256BF1_= Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" costinm@covalent.net wrote on 07/10/2002 12:46:58 AM: > On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Conor MacNeill wrote: > > > On Tuesday, July 9, 2002, at 06:54 , Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote: > > > [snip] > Well, I think ant1 is one of the cleanest and best documented codebases > in jakarta and xml.apache. And it seems to have one of the best > communities, and probably is the most used. Not to mention that the > "Task" and the other core interfaces and the DTD are a de-facto standard. To be fair to Ant, maybe this statement is true, and the codebase is cleaner than other projects, but IMHO it says more about the other projects than it does about Ant. As a part-time consumer of the API, the lack of javadoc is simply stunning. The tests are a god send though. But the last time I looked at Struts for example, it was a lot better on documentation in the code bsae than Ant was. Some projects get people who feel docs and clean code are important, others don't. It's all about what's important to them. > Try looking at tomcat, xerces, xalan, axis - all very good and successfull > projects. You'll find far more mess and complexity, far less > documentation. Sad, really. > I think this is a result of the simple core design in ant1, plus 2-3 > years of refinement on the codebase. Personal opinion: I think it's the result of hard work by those working on Ant, and the 'standards' they require. [snip] > Of course, any proposal needs to start by saying that whatever was > before is broken and can never be fixed. Most revolutions I know 'Never be fixed'? I have always assumed a proposal was about something that was considered broken, or needing change, not that it could never be fixed. > I still have to see one real issue that can't be resolved by > the current codebase but can be by a proposal. Of course not. All things are possible given infinite time and energy. The issue isn't whether they *can* be done in the Ant 1 code base, the issue is *should* they? My take is that it is faster to do new development using a cleaner base... As someone who's done far more reading of Ant code than developing it, reading the Mutant code base (as an example) is a pleasure compared to the core Ant code. -- dIon Gillard, Multitask Consulting Work: http://www.multitask.com.au Developers: http://adslgateway.multitask.com.au/developers --=_alternative 005535AF4A256BF1_=--