Mailing-List: contact ivy-user-help@ant.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: ivy-user@ant.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (nike.apache.org: domain of Kfiles@masergy.com designates
 64.47.5.21 as permitted sender)
From: Kirby Files <Kfiles@masergy.com>
To: "ivy-user@ant.apache.org" <ivy-user@ant.apache.org>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 07:30:15 -0500
Subject: RE: Question about documentation
Thread-Topic: Question about documentation
Thread-Index: ActkhKyW50lIc7cKS1WzaQHuNrZwRgAAEa8wAAEHQLI=
Message-ID: 
 <B54239B8E6758C4A9A59103AD9C359FA0B0E84CE0D@MAILBOXSERVER.add0.masergy.com>
References: 
 <1286279927.67841.ezmlm@ant.apache.org>,<A859ED91E5B64A49A34C4340328BB43D55B37B@dsource.local>
In-Reply-To: <A859ED91E5B64A49A34C4340328BB43D55B37B@dsource.local>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
acceptlanguage: en-US
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0

Sorry, David, I cannot help provide a link to different documentation. In r=
egards to understanding Ivy better, one thing that I'd recommend is reading=
 everything you can about the dependency conf attribute and defaultConfMapp=
ing. I didn't truly understand what I was doing with Ivy until I had a good=
 grasp on how Ivy configurations worked for recursive dependencies.

If you want specific help rather than just discussing your frustration, ple=
ase provide ivy.settings, ivy.xml files, ant fragments, and the issues you =
are having, and usually many people on this list are happy to help.

Thanks,
---
Kirby Files
Software Architect
Masergy Communications
kfiles@masergy.com


________________________________________
From: David Sills [DSills@datasourceinc.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 8:11 AM
To: ivy-user@ant.apache.org
Subject: Question about documentation

To whom it may concern:

Help! :)

I am a Java developer with 10 years experience, a masters degree, an IQ
above 160, and an excellent work ethic. I have spent 5 days trying to
figure out how to add Ivy to my current project. I do not have another 5
days - that's just not practical at my job.

I have read document after document, including the complete tutorial and
reference documentation. I have read the section in Ant in Action,
several apparently useful resources and blogs on the web.

And still I have been completely unable to make even the simplest Ivy
configuration work for what should be an easy project. (One JAR file,
two JAR file dependencies.)

If anyone is actually interested having documentation written (or maybe
a book, who knows) that can be read by someone who doesn't understand a
thing about Ivy, I would be willing to contribute to or even author
that. But first, I have to understand what's going on myself.

All the examples I see are either way too simple or way too specific to
a particular project. The reference documentation doesn't really explain
what each attribute does in each file - it merely adds an English
description (which is sometimes self-referential).

This is what I see so often in open-source projects: the documentation
is read by people who don't need to read it to understand things - they
already understand them. They only need to be reminded of things they
already know. And it doesn't occur to them (understandably, to be sure)
that someone who doesn't understand what they do might be confused by a
lot of extremely abstract terminology without really practical examples.

I'm obviously not the first person to have this problem. A lot of people
I have read love Ivy but bewail the state of its documentation. I'd be
happy to help, but can someone first point me in the direction of a
step-by-step description of using Ivy? And I don't mean the tutorial,
which is fine but assumes a lot of things it doesn't specify.

If Ivy's not for me, then who is it for? I'm an expert in using Ant and
really don't like Maven's inflexibility. Ivy sounded like the perfect
solution. But even with the best will in the world, I couldn't get
anywhere!

Sorry for the rant. Somebody please point me to the blog where they
describe this "for dummies" (I'm not above this at all) and I'll just go
and make it work. Thanks!

David Sills