Hi Gilles,
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 7:17 AM, Gilles Gaillard <[email protected]
> wrote:
> I think I'm one of these ant 'refugees' you spoke about in your July mail
> exchanges.
>
> Since I noticed you didn't make any progress in publishing the page you
> were speaking
> about in your mails (I know free time is a rare thing ... but users like to
> see updates
> and news produced regularly ;-) I thought that the following questions
> could also help
> you to understand what kind of questions such a refugee could expect an
> answer to.
>
Yes, good initiative. I'm sure it can help people reading this list or
searching the mailing list archive at a later time.
So here the list of questions, divided in two parts:
>
> 1. Basics
> - where does buildr expect to find ant itself
>
In your local Maven2 repository. If it's not available, it will try to
download it from one of your configured remote repositories.
- where does buildr expect to find ant scripts
>
Buildr doesn't use ant scripts directly but there are several ways to
integrate with ant:
1) use ant tasks directly by using Antwrap (preferred)
Buildr.ant(name) do |ant|
ant.copy :todir =>'foo' do
ant.fileset :dir=>'bar'
end
ant.replace :file=>"foo.properties", :token=>"@foo@", :value=>'bar'
end
2) call ant's main() directly using RJB
Java.org.apache.tools.ant.Main [options] [target]
3) invoke ant using java and Ruby's
system('java -Dant.home=c:\ant org.apache.tools.ant.Main [options] [target]
')
4) invoke ant using ant's shell scripts
system('ant -buildfile foo.xml')
The last three allow you to call ant scripts directly.
> - for syntactic reasons linked to ant history, I must currently keep on
> using ant-1.6.2
> is that a blocker point - where do I specify the ant version I want to use
> ?
>
In buildr.yml, simply add:
ant: 1.6.2
- my projects layout looks like the standard one you described but is not
> exactly the same.
> For example, the 'target' build directory is named here 'build'. Where in
> buildr can I
> change the layout or the directory names ?
>
See http://buildr.apache.org/rdoc/classes/Buildr/Layout.html
> - As a first step wouln't it be better for my use-case to use ant-wrapper
> without buildr ?
>
Depends if you want to take multiple small steps and refactor in-between or
one giant step and be done with it ;)
>
> 2. Next steps
> As a next step, I would like to improve my build and reduce the complexity
> of scripts usage
> by implementing an upper layer by using buildr/ruby making all ant public
> targets available.
> Is that the way you expect ant users to proceed, what advices would you
> give me for that
> purpose ?
>
Personally, I don't see much gain in reducing complexity by moving to Rake +
Antwrap alone.
If your build fits Buildr's model of compile, package, test, etc. then I
would make the jump to Buildr directly.
Perhaps a good approach is to try on one project and refine the approach
until you've gotten the significant gains (productivity, complexity, ...)
before you move to other projects.
Last note, I would have expected to find an 'Overview' page somewhere
> between 'Getting Started'
> and 'Projects' that gives an overview of the system and how it works.
>
Agreed. We sort of assume familiarity with Maven2. I'm working on
something that will address some of this but it's not ready yet....
alex
