Mailing-List: contact dev-help@ant.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: "Ant Developers List" <dev@ant.apache.org>
Date: 16 Sep 2003 13:16:18 -0000
Message-ID: <20030916131618.6697.qmail@nagoya.betaversion.org>
From: bugzilla@apache.org
To: dev@ant.apache.org
Cc: 
Subject: DO NOT REPLY [Bug 23191]  -
    need brief,
 specific documentation on including custom tasks in deployed apps

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL, BUT PLEASE POST YOUR BUG 
RELATED COMMENTS THROUGH THE WEB INTERFACE AVAILABLE AT
<http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23191>.
ANY REPLY MADE TO THIS MESSAGE WILL NOT BE COLLECTED AND 
INSERTED IN THE BUG DATABASE.

http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23191

need brief, specific documentation on including custom tasks in deployed apps


------- Additional Comments From dbikel@cis.upenn.edu  2003-09-16 13:16 -------
In Example 2 in the section
http://ant.apache.org/manual/develop.html#writingowntask
it mentions "Another way to add a task (more permanently), is to add the task name and 
implementing class name to the default.properties file in the org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs 
package. Then you can use it as if it were a built-in task."  This sentence is highly confusing: why 
would anyone want to extend ant and then modify a particular ant installation?  It would allow you 
to build locally using the new, custom task, but it makes the project totally unportable.

Also, using Example 1 (simply labeled "Example" in the docs) means that you must have 
precompiled your custom task before distributing your project.  But with an extensible build tool 
that is itself undergoing development (not to mention the JDK itself), this seems dangerous.  
Example 2 seems to be the only good, portable method of including custom tasks in a project that 
you want to be portable, but the docs don't exactly make this clear.  One simple thing that would 
go a long way would be to label "Example" and "Example 2" with more explanatory titles, such as 
"Including a pre-compiled custom task in your project" and "Using ant to bootstrap itself with 
custom tasks included in your project", or something to that effect (those are wordy, but 
perspicuous).

If this is all clear in the latest CVS docs, then I sincerely apologize for creating this feature request.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@ant.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@ant.apache.org