John Casey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 13/12/2002 02:38:59 PM: > Pardon me for saying, but it sort of seems like you're missing the > point. Not everyone has the expertise, time, or basic "starter" > knowledge to know how to do what you describe. This is the real value > of docs. I agree. However, even those that don't have that knowledge can contribute by detailing the sort of docs they would like to see, and helping to build them.
> I understand that this is a project just now nearing the 1.0 release, > but it seems to me that the single biggest strength of Ant is its > community. Ant was very accessible in terms of extension, partly > because of it's simple task mechanism, and partly because that task > mechanism was well-supported by documentation. Ant's early docs were hard to read and incomplete. As someone who contributed a 'frame'd set of Ant docs back in the very early days, let me tell you it was damn hard to work things out. I'm not saying Maven's any better, but... > The sourceModification question isn't the only one lingering, and I find > that the architecture of the project, in terms of what basic info a > build manager needs to tweak in order to do text file filtering, for > example, isn't accessible, except perhaps by digging into parts of the > project that should be abstracted away from him. At work, I am > currently converting all of our project deployments to be mavenized, so > rest assured that in due time I will contribute what I know to be solid > fact about the functioning of maven. Cool! > As I said before, I think it's a wonderful product already. However, > the complexity of the subject matter makes it a complex product, and > this complexity should be insulated from Joe User as much as possible. > In this case, the documentation becomes a critical piece in the > project's architecture. Please help us by helping flesh out the sorts of docs we will need. If anyone does want to contribute, they can look at all the plugins that are missing docs. Around half of them have no goals or properties docs. I'm happy to help anyone who wants to give it a go. > IMHO, of course. :) Ditto.... -- dIon Gillard, Multitask Consulting Blog: http://www.freeroller.net/page/dion/Weblog Work: http://www.multitask.com.au
