I would love designer support in Nant. I'm not big on XML, it's lots of
angle brackets to me. I'm really into using and writing rich UIs. However,
as the person managing the nightly build, and the person evangelizing Nant
to my co-workers, I think that documentation is more important. Besides
being an introduction to Nant, the documentation is also many developers'
introduction to automated builds.
Specifically:
* Full, verbose documentation for each task. As a build writer, I want/need
to know about every corner case, limitation, and feature of every task. I
need to know why the build behaves the way it does.
* Numerous task based examples within the documentation. Include answers to
FAQs from the dev and user list.
* XML schema, including sub-elements. Instructions on how to get
intellisense working with .build files.
* More example build files. Every task and attribute should have at least
one example if at all possible.
* Best practices documentation on how to manage large / complex build files.
Building diverse projects across multiple departments with shared code, 3rd
party open source code, 3rd party binaries, build notifications, logging is
difficult.
(If anyone has any suggestions on this, I'm all ears. We have about
200K worth of build files so far, and have only about 1/10th of our projects
in the daily build.)
* Documentation on how to separate developer build and automated build.
* Documentation on how to integrate with Visual Studio.Net tools menu, and
other little tips and tricks.
Just my $0.02.
Nick Varacalli
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scott
Hernandez
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 14:23
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [nant-dev] NAnt Designer Support
Mitch,
Yeah, it would be nice to put together a real-time chat with a whiteboard.
Instead though we could post images and storyboards about the user stories
for this idea. I think I understand what is driving this but part of my
ambiguity is not knowing the user base. It would be great to support all
types of users, but really this tool, along with Ant, requires someone who
has a good grasp of xml and the ability to read the docs.
If I had an option of where to put resources at this point I would emphasize
getting the docs into a more usable and easier to read format, then make
sure we had good error messages for validation and an accurate xml schema
def. for all tasks. To that end I have been starting to beef up our user
help (html stuff generated from ndoc) with more sub-element information and
better index. I had already been working on the nantschema task and working
through the information we generate for exception on validation and xml
loading.
I think this is a great idea, but given the resources we have available to
work on NAnt, it seems unrealistic that we will have time to work on this
for the next few months. On the other hand, if someone wanted to do it, we
would be happy to take patches :)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitch Denny" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Scott Hernandez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 3:05 AM
Subject: RE: [nant-dev] NAnt Designer Support
> Hi Scott,
>
> The driver for this kind of functionality would be orientated more at
> the end user who has been charged with setting up an automated build.
> With that in mind I think the solution might possibly consist of a few
> layers:
>
> --------------------------------
> Tools (e.g. NAntpad)
> --------------------------------
> NAnt Designers
> --------------------------------
> NAnt / NAnt DOM
> --------------------------------
>
> We already have NAnt. What I am suggesting is that as part of the NAnt
> distribution (or possibly a side project) we start building a series of
> designers - where designers are just UI bits which can provide a view of
> an XML element representing a NAnt task.
>
> Other tools (i.e. not part of the NAnt distribution) would use these
> designers to construct their own interfaces. So, for example when
> someone using NAntpad (I'm just using NAntpad as an example here) uses
> that particular interface to modify the settings on a task, the NAnt
> designer can be invoked to provide the interface. Tool designers could
> choose to override the designer if they wish but this approach would
> allow task developers to put together usable UI for others to manipuate
> their tasks with.
>
> Tools could add additional value by providing things like wizards which
> allow the end user to put together solutions to common problems. For
> example building a VS.NET project, manipulating AssemblyVersionInfo
> files, updating dependencies etc.
>
> Pity we can't get a whiteboard session going :)
>
> ----------------------------------------
> - Mitch Denny
> - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> - http://www.monash.net
> - +61 (414) 610141
> -
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Scott Hernandez [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 5:04 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: [nant-dev] NAnt Designer Support
> >
> > I'm not sure what user experience this would provide. What
> > kind of designer would the nant stuff look like? Would it be
> > like the xsd editor, or database schema editor, with
> > something like a flow diagram of tasks? Would it be a buff'd
> > up tree control, like the vsnet addin is now? I understand
> > that having a designer based solution would allow for much
> > more flexibility and extensibility in the future, but it
> > seems a little much considering we are working on getting a
> > 1.0 release of the core functionally out. I'm really
> > interested in hearing how this stuff would work, and who this
> > is targeted at, but I just don't think I see it yet.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Mitch Denny" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 4:31 AM
> > Subject: RE: [nant-dev] NAnt Designer Support
> >
> >
> > > Hi Scott,
> > >
> > > We wouldn't need to modify the existing code base much other than
> > > decorating tasks (and sometimes their properties/attributes with
> > > attributes. The idea behind the design time attributes is
> > not to create
> > > a tool inside the NAnt distribution itself, but rather support the
> > > development editors like NAntpad. Kinda like the way the component
> > > designer features in the .NET framework work in VS.NET and
> > WebMatrix.
> > >
> > > The design time tool would reflect over the task class
> > libraries looking
> > > for classes decorated with the designer attribute. When a task is
> > > selected from a build file the type pointed to by the
> > designer attribute
> > > is created and a method is invoked which returns a UI
> > object which can
> > > be used to build the XML node. This creation method would have some
> > > contextual information passed to it like which OS/UI
> > toolkit it needs to
> > > support.
> > >
> > > If the designer doesn't support that environment then the tool (e.g.
> > > NAntpad would gracefully downgrade to its basic capabilities.
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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