Hello all,
i don't find this way very clean (but perhaps my poor english understanding
helped :) ).
I think we shall better consider the use of ant (jakarta.apache.org) , this
software greatly enhances project management and automates many tasks for
programmers such as compilation.
I used to have a big projet (~15000 classes) that was compiled through a
hierarchy of makefiles. When we used the ant, i took us 10 minutes to write a
project file that compiled all thoses classes in a shot !
There are many other features in ant that JDE should rely on (such as jar
making, deployement, rmic, javadoc, etc, etc).
Why don't we look forward a more symbiotic use of JDE and ant as those
projects are really complementary. (~poor english :) ) ?
This would allow all jde coders to get rid of a lot of work (for management
tasks) and would let us focus on making a full-featured IDE.
Stéphane
On Monday 19 March 2001 08:22, you wrote:
> Paul Kinnucan wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > The JDE has a Java build feature that relies on javac dependency checking
> > to rebuild a project. This feature has been broken by the reduced level
> > of dependency checking in recent versions of javac.
> >
> > Lately I have begun using a new approach to using javac for building my
> > Java projects that appears fast and perfectly reliable. I'm considering
> > replacing the current Java build scheme with this new version and would
> > like your feedback.
> >
> > The new approach relies on automatic creation of special classes, called
> > compile masters, that reference every Java class in a project. The
> > compile masters correspond to a makefile. The Java build algorithm
> > creates a compile master in the root package and in each descendent
> > package, thereby creating a hierarchy of compile masters that mirrors the
> > package hierarchy. It then uses javac to compile the toplevel compile
> > master. Compiling the root compile master causes javac to check every
> > class in the project to ensure that it is current and recompile any
> > classes that are not current.
> >
> > The benefits of this approach are:
> >
> > 1. No need for makefile.
> >
> > 2. Fast -- only one invocation of javac is needed to rebuild a project,
> > no matter how big the project is.
> >
> > 3. Reliable -- every out-of-date class in the project is recompiled.
> >
> > The Java build feature would include a build-and-run command and would
> > also allow you to specify multiple projects in a single build command to
> > handle the cases where one project is dependent on classes in another
> > project.
> >
> > Note that this new build would not replace the JDE's support for using
> > make to build projects. You could continue to use make as an alternative
> > to the Java build feature.
> >
> > What do you think of this proposal?
> >
> > - Paul
>
> I am used to `build' and convert other files besides the java files in
> my makefiles. I like your idea, but will it be possible to convert
> (compile) other files with this method? Or am I misinterpretting your
> suggestion?
>
> Richard.
