I think the original person wanted a Java based tool though..so a Perl
solution probably wont work.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Vogel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 11:35 AM
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: RE: Can someone tell me what is so great about Ant?
>
>
> Check out "cons" www.dsmit.com/cons/
>
> It does dependency scanning and maintains an
> MD5 signature for determining whether a rebuild
> of a file is necessary, the signature incorporates
> ALL the inputs (including the compiler and the compiler
> command line) that lead to a derived object so
> it is quite good at rebuilding what it should and not
> rebuilding what it should not.
>
> -Peter
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: King Dale [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 10:25 AM
> > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > Subject: Can someone tell me what is so great about Ant?
> >
> >
> > I don't mean to be a troll, but I have been trying to find a
> > good Java build
> > tool. I have seen lots of hype about Ant and have looked at
> > it and I'd just
> > like to say I am not that impressed. I am hoping someone can
> > show me where I
> > am wrong. Maybe there are some better ways to do things as
> > all I have seen
> > are simple build script examples.
> >
> > It is supposedly a powerful tool that replaces make, but I
> > find lots of
> > problem with it as a build tool. Here is a simple example.
> > Let's use the
> > build.xml directly from the documentation:
> >
> > <project name="MyProject" default="dist" basedir=".">
> >
> > <!-- set global properties for this build -->
> > <property name="src" value="." />
> > <property name="build" value="build" />
> > <property name="dist" value="dist" />
> >
> > <target name="prepare">
> > <!-- Create the time stamp -->
> > <tstamp/>
> > <!-- Create the build directory structure used by compile -->
> > <mkdir dir="${build}" />
> > </target>
> >
> > <target name="compile" depends="prepare">
> > <!-- Compile the java code from ${src} into ${build} -->
> > <javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${build}" />
> > </target>
> >
> > <target name="dist" depends="compile">
> > <!-- Create the ${dist}/lib directory -->
> > <mkdir dir="${dist}/lib" />
> >
> > <!-- Put everything in ${build} into the
> > MyProject-${DSTAMP}.jar file
> > -->
> > <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/MyProject-${DSTAMP}.jar"
> > basedir="${build}" />
> > </target>
> >
> > <target name="clean">
> > <!-- Delete the ${build} and ${dist} directory trees -->
> > <delete dir="${build}" />
> > <delete dir="${dist}" />
> > </target>
> > </project>
> >
> > And let's create Main.java and Foo.java defined as follows:
> > public class Main
> > {
> > public static void main( String[] args )
> > {
> > Foo.test();
> > }
> > }
> >
> > public class Foo
> > {
> > public static void test()
> > {
> > System.out.println( "Foo.test()" );
> > }
> > }
> >
> > I run Ant and it builds correctly. But let's say I need to
> change the
> > signature of Foo.test and I add a parameter, but I forget to
> > make the change
> > in Main. If I run Ant again it will tell me that it built
> > successfully, but
> > I have successfully built an inconsistent target. The code
> > will not run
> > since Main was not recompiled.
> >
> > Certainly I could write my own tasks and explicit rules to
> > fix this, but all
> > I want to do is build, not write my own make tool. Or I could
> > simply always
> > rebuild all files by deleting the generated classes, but then
> > all Ant is is
> > a glorifed batch file. Perhaps others have some other ideas on this.
> >
> > Something else I look for, but is extremely rare in make
> tools is the
> > ability to handle that file dates can go backwards. For
> > instance when using
> > an SCM tool and I am working on version 2.x and there is a
> > problem found in
> > version 1.9. I will check out the source files for 1.9 but
> > they will have
> > dates older than the current files and even though the files
> > are different
> > they will not be built because the generated files are newer.
> > One way for a
> > build tool to handle this is to maintain a build log that is
> > consulted for
> > the next build. That build log says that file X with a
> > certain timestamp was
> > generated from this list of files with timestamps. If any of
> > the time stamps
> > are not equal to what is in the log, X is regernerated. The
> > only build tool
> > I know of that does this sort of thing is omake in ClearCase.
> >
> > Hopefully these will be taken as ideas for further improvement.
> >
> > ---
> > -- Dale King
> >
>
