Well, just to throw in my thoughts,
I was working on mostly Java (some .Net as well) builds since 2000 to
2016 as a professional under the title of build engineer. I've handled
simple batch files, makefiles, Ant scripts, NAnt scripts, Maven and
Gradle and some other tools as well.
- Ant was good in the olds days, but when you need to combine all that
dependencies even with Ivy, I would not start a project with it any
more, unless it is a throw-away IDE generated one.
- Maven. I like the deep integration of that into NetBeans. NetBeans
saved me not even once dealing with nasty Maven projects. I thank the
rise of binary repositories to Maven. But I honestly think beyond that
Maven is a big, ivory tower, design flaw and also promoting some bad
practices. I would not start a project with Maven, unless there is no
alternative to it. Even if Maven is still strong out there, I consider
that as a legacy tool.
- Gradle. I've first seen it when it was version 0.4. I've tried it,
laughed at it, then forgot that for almost a year. Next time I've tried
that was probably 1.6. I got impressed. Yes it gives you the power to do
anything in a build script, and with great power comes great
responsibility on the developers. In my opinion it is the easiest , most
efficient Java build system to start a project with. Even if that
project would be just a throw-away one. As of an IDE our responsibility
to promote good examples, and try to do the best when encounter bad
practice as well.
In that light 12.1 is bringing Gradle Support out of the box with Java
SE cluster (no Groovy would be required), I hope 12.2 will have a better
Gradle Project Wizard (if I can pull that off)
On 8/12/20 4:55 PM, Scott Palmer wrote:
On Aug 12, 2020, at 4:12 PM, Tim Boudreau <[email protected]> wrote:
My 2c:
- Ant and Ant-based projects are never going away, the same way that
Makefiles are never going away - even if nobody uses them for new projects
anymore, the need to interoperate with legacy code will not disappear
- I'd be in favor of making Maven projects the default thing that's
pre-selected when users create a new project, and updating tutorials to
focus on it - I don't think Ant makes sense to push people towards for new
projects
No argument. (Even though I will never again make a new Maven project. It has
bit me in the ass one too many times and there are various things I loath about
it.)
- Gradle is neat; the fact that it targets native build systems as a
first-class thing is a really good thing (ever tried to incorporate
building some C libraries into a Maven project build with a bunch of
Jenkins slaves on different OS's and bundle the artifacts? I have. It
ain't pretty).
Exactly. Maven works okay when it works (and I’m not the one writing the
tedious mountains of XML), but it doesn’t take long to hit a project where
Maven just can’t handle what you need to do in a reasonable way.
Referring to your example, I would love to see support for native projects in
Netbeans via Gradle. A major project I work on is all about authoring many
modules that have both a Java and a C++ component.
Gradle can be much easier to use than either Ant or Maven, but it is also
requires more discipline. You can get yourself into trouble. If the IDE can
help that would be great.
Gradle's scriptability aims the evolution of a project's build squarely at
the bad old days of needing magic properties files in special locations,
and things like that:
I disagree. It may enable that, but doesn’t aim for it or encourage it. Bad
practices are possible with any tool. It’s similar to how you can’t code
everything in Java, some projects need a native side. ‘C’ gives you the power
to make a lot of mistakes, but it is often the simplest solution to a
particular problem.
- basically,
whenever possible, the workflow to onboarding with a new project should be
"git clone foo; cd foo; do-the-build"
I agree. Though it should be “hg clone foo”, Why make things harder than they
need to be :-)
Do-the-build should be one of:
“ant”
“make”
“mvn install”
“gradle”
(Or similar, whatever tool is used)
IMO an
IDE should encourage the path of user-doesn't-hit-themselves-with-hammer as
the path of least resistance.
Agree.
I don’t see that as a reason to not offer an excellent level of support for
Gradle-based projects though. Wizards to start new Gradle-based projects with a
reasonable build script that follows best practices and all that.
If there are a lot of head-hammer-hittters
out there, maybe supplement that with some head pillows, but don't hand
them the hammer.
Software engineering eventually requires the pounding of a few nails. That’s
why Maven doesn’t work well for many complex real-world projects... no hammer
(or its hammer is much harder to use).
But back to NB... Gradle projects are for certain going to be impossible to
integrate at the same level as Maven because the level of uniformity just isn’t
there. It’s both Gradle’s advantage and disadvantage at the same time.
That said, it’s not likely to go away either and is very popular. It should
still be well supported.
Cheers,
Scott
On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 12:06 PM Will Hartung <[email protected]> wrote:
Ant has been the historic underlying build tool for Netbeans projects, but
over the years, not only has NB been a very good companion with Maven,
Maven is also much more popular industry wide.
There was a comment on the user list recently about Java FX, and one reply
was, paraphrasing, "the best way to use Java FX was to use Maven".
I was also looking at the legacy NB Platform tutorials, which use Ant, but
certainly need some updating.
But that brought the question. Should one style of build be promoted over
the other, are both systems "faithfully and fully supported", or is Ant
going to perhaps slowly die on the vine of disinterest?
Is there any internal mandate of ensuring compatibility between the two
build system, especially in terms of ensuring high level things like
wizards and whatnot work for both systems? If someone adds a new feature,
contrived, "Create a Microprofile web service", is the project obligated
(as much as it's obligated to do anything) to create a wizard for both Ant
and Maven, or is it acceptable to only use one mechanism?
Just curious if there's any formal position on the two systems and their
status within the NB environment
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