Hello guys,
last week there was again a thread about binary dists or at least about simplifying the build on the users list:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=106817421400001&r=1&w=2
The original reason were Alexander's problems with the CLI: it is/was not usable with the authentication-fw block. Further dependencies were not in the blocks.properties and so he became frustrated.
One solution for him where different blocks.properties for different use cases. Another solution IMO are the complete dependencies in our blocks.properties. But maintaining both gump.xml and blocks.properties is a pain. The solution is to have one file and to generate the other one. I wrote a stylesheet doing this from gump.xml, find it attached (after problems with Xalan).
The question is how to integrate it exactly into the build. Only as a helper target? Only for developers before committing gump.xml? As one of the first steps in the build, i.e. blocks.properties is removed from the CVS and it's only generated dynamically?
Furthermore the gump.xml project/@status must be completed (status="stable" and stable="deprecated").
I hope you will find it useful. Any comments?
I'd say in two ways:
(1) as a task anyone can run at their leasure: build blocks-properties
and
(2) as a part of the release process - so that releases always have a correct blocks-properties.
That way, developers have the responsibility to create a blocks-properites file for themselves, but users get one ready made. If someone starts using CVS, they need to look out for this.
Does your blocks.properties include dependency info and descriptions of the blocks themselves?
Otherwise, I think this is great, and much needed (and will no our users, and gump, no harm at all!)
Regards, Upayavira
