On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 12:35 -0500, Daniel Spiewak wrote: > > > > forgive my ignorance, but how exactly does buildr do that? i can see that > > you can download a file from a given url, but where is the code that digs > > into a zip to extract a jar from it? > > > Don't ask me how Buildr does it, but somehow... Probably just on the > strength of Assaf's brilliance. The code shown in the quick_start.textile > will download DBPool and auto-extract the JAR from the zipfile, installing > it into the local repository. I actually copy/pasted that code from a > buildfile I have used in the past which used exactly that functionality. It > really works. I asume most of the ant users (except for those that are using ivy) are used to store jars locally in some lib/ directory, and then keep a list of compile-libs and run-libs in the build.xml. For those kind of people it's hard to trust the "magic" (hell?) of maven dependencies, and also to depend on the fact, that you have connectivity. Additionally, they want to make sure that no SNAPSHOTS are used, as otherwise there's the possibility of different versions of jars on different build/developer machines. All this throws in a lot of indefinite things a successful build depends on. If then the build tool itself additionally does things that are not really deterministic (are they?), the build feels even more magically and less trustworthy. That's the reason why I would not propagate this feature in the quickstart, or at least it should be clear that it is definitely deterministic and no magic at all.
I think no one wants to depend on magic for a successful build, and from my experience that's where a lot of maven critics comes from. A simple, comprehensible and reproducable build is the goal IMHO. So, again, I'd vote for mentioning that buildr can do lots of stuff and link to appropriate places. Cheers, Martin PS. if you definitively want to mention that buildr can download and extract artifacts, what about a sentence in the tip like "and if you want, buildr can even download a zip file and extract the artifact for you - less work for you! (See magic explanation <link>here</link>)"? > > Daniel
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