> Can I suggest trying something new possibly? ant-contrib > might be a > good idea, but is it possible to have the ant manual contain(ant > repository still would NOT contain the jars such as > ant-contrib, just docs) > 1. Core Tasks > 2. Optional Tasks > 3. External Self-Contained Tasks > 4. External Tasks > Then, people who write tasks can put the task in ant-contrib and post > the documentation to ant, so at least it can get some visibility. > People could also include download links to the jars from the > manual, to > download the additional things needed. I think this would be very > useful.
I donīt think that is a good idea. There are so many different projects with their tasks (and their own doc-style). Therefore you have - multiple styles - very often changes But do you know the "External Tools and Tasks" page on the homepage? http://ant.apache.org/external.html > I have one more suggestion. Ant contrib was saying I > have to change > the build file. It would be really nice if the only thing we > had to do > was drop in the ant-contrib jar in the lib directory of ant, and ant > used a different classloader to read out of unknown jars to check the > tasks.properties file, and if there was one automatically add > the tasks > without changes to the build file. I don't think it's that > hard to do. > Search lib directory for jars not called ant.jar and > optional.jar, and > then load that jar in a different class loader just to get the > properties file and read it in to get all the tasks. What do > you think? We (or more "the other" :-) are working on something called "ant libs" (or something similiar). I think that should do that job. Jan
