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Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:41:38 +0100
From: "Eanna Butler" <eanna.butler@gmail.com>
To: dev@ant.apache.org
Subject: Scripting Reality - Request for Ant Usage Questionnaire
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Hi,

For those on the Ant Mailing List, I'd be very interested if you could
arrange a 'questionnaire' on Ant usage.

Something along the lines of
   How do you use scripting features in Ant?
       - I don't use any procedural features in my Ant scripts
       - I use AntContrib (or other similar third-party Ant-based task library)
       - I've written my own tasks that implement scripting features
       - I call out to scripts from Ant
       - I call Ant from scripts
       - I embed scripts using the <script ..> task

I realise this kind of discussion has been active in the Ant community
for some years. But I would be very interested in learning the results
of such a questionnaire, as a way to capture the reality of Ant usage
"in the field".

I understand that the Apache Ant design team reserves the right to
influence the direction of Ant's features, but when such features are
rejected from users, they must have been requested. I wonder, were it
not for AntContrib, and those (such as me) that are willing to author
their own scripting features (e.g. I have written a Repeat task, a
TaskContainer with optional Parallel behaviour over a while(..)-style
loop), would there be yet more requests for such features.

How often have I seen posts from Search Engine searches along the
lines: "Scripting in Ant".

I do understand that Ant Core ought to be declarative, but with the
Optional Tasks system already in place, I fail to see a persuasive
argument for scripting/procedural elements to be available as optional
features in the Ant offering.


-- 
EBu

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