--- James Duncan Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Other visions are fine, but they aren't Ant imo. I'll work *hard* to > make sure that people have the chance they need to explore other ideas. > Other thoughts on what a Java Based Build System is. Call 'em what you > will -- different ideas, forks, whatnot. Competition is good. But they > *are* different. They *aren't* Ant.
Hi James, I think I understand how you feel, and how things managed to get confused and very nearly completely out-of-control -- but I also think the two most divisive things that happened were 1) people had gotten used to Ant being an OpenSource project, with all that implies, and 2) you *seemed* to be trying to un-OpenSource it by saying you had returned to take it back over and (I'm paraphrasing) "make it be what it should've been from the start and would have been but for your having to leave it behind for awhile". Proposals were coming in because people thought "Ant2" was *open* to having proposals put forth for it. But the people who did put proposals out there felt their's were being ignored because you'd apparently already set your sights only on your own, and you weren't (or didn't appear to be) even willing to look at anyone else's. I agree that anyone is welcome to come up with whatever Java-based build tool they want -- but you should try to take into consideration the fact that Ant is already *widely* in use, and once you've got a large "customer base", it's exceedingly difficult for someone else to make even a dent in that -- even if they do come up with a "better mouse-trap". (Think back to IBM's dominance from the early '50s -- they got their stuff out there early, got everyone hooked into it, and it was damn near impossible for anyone else to make any headway against them for decades!) I'm an old Unix/C person, and when I (only recently) got into the Java world, I started looking around for a Java-oriented build tool. As it turned out, there wasn't really much out there, and certainly nothing that seemed as "alive" and well-supported as Ant did. That's one of the reasons I went with Ant -- it was connected to Apache, a large, well-respected organization, and it was connected with Sun (Java's papa :), and it seemed like it'd probably do most of the things I needed it to do. But it's not (yet) a perfect tool for my needs -- as my explanation of my build issues tried to illustrate. I don't really expect to ever find a "perfect tool" that'll do everything that I need it to, in exactly the way *I'd* like it to -- but I'm hoping that "Ant2" will at least address some of the issues I am still faced with, and in a way that allows me to *simplify* the way I need to go about dealing with those issues. If your approach to "Ant2" will do that -- great! bring it on! :) -- but, if there are aspects of the other proposals that have been offered up that would make sense to incorporate into yours, because they'd allow for things that yours wouldn't (or would, but with more difficulty), then I would hope you'd be open to at least looking at ways to blend those aspects into what eventually becomes "Ant2". And not because you've been made to feel like you "have to", but simply because a good idea is a good idea, regardless of who came up with it. Diane ===== ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/
