Well, I had a very whacky idea that seems to be working very well. Ever find yourself copying a build.xml file only to add stuff to it later like code coverage and wish you could add to all those other projects you copied the build.xml file from.
Well try this new project out for size.....http://sourceforge.net/projects/mockobject has a buildtemplate. If you download it and run "java -jar buildtemplate.jar -directory <project>" it installs itself with ant, junit, a code coverage tool for testing all built into one. Ok, I don't here any "that's cool" just yet. But now try this, start 10 more projects with this buildtemplate. Then, take the buildtemplate and upgrade ant, or junit, or code coverage, or make changes to the build.xml file, or add the findbugs tool to it. Then to update the 10 projects with the new build.xml or new junit, or whatever, just drop the buildtemplate.jar right over where it put itself when you first ran "java -jar buildtemplate.jar -directory <project>" which is in the <project>/tools directory. It is a pretty sweet way of maintaining alot of similar services build environments. What is really nice, is you only have to check in build.sh, build.bat, buildtemplate.jar, junit.jar, ant.properties, dist.xml each time you upgrade. ant, emma, jdk package lists, ant-contrib and a bunch of goodies are hidden inside the buildtemplate.jar. It is quite a weird way of going about things but it seems to work out very well in these days of SOA, and a module/project for every service when needing that same buildtemplate. This is just meant to be a pattern for others. The buildtemplate you need may be differen if doing J2EE, etc, but you can start with this implementation and modify it for your own needs. thanks and I hope someone likes this whacky idea, dean
