> On Apr 21, 2021, at 2:15 AM, Owen Thomas <owen.paul.tho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think Ant is lovely. Most of my projects only extend the Java SE API. I
> don't see the need to change to a build tool that manages third party
> libraries unless and until I need to use third party libraries.
>
> Keep supporting Ant and keep the build process as trivial as it needs to be.
A Gradle build script for you could literally be a single line:
apply plugin: ‘java’
or
apply plugin: ‘application’ // to get support for bundling the app with
launch scripts and stuff
Sure Gradle also manages third party libraries… but it doesn’t force you to
include that kind of stuff in your build.gradle file if you aren’t using it.
Ant works, but it doesn’t scale well. Just look at the complexity of the NB
ant scripts to see. Maven handles things a bit better than Ant, but it can
also become cumbersome for complex projects. If it was just a simple Java app
with dependencies, then I would choose Ant+Ivy over Maven.. but start adding
customizations and things get ugly fast. The down side of Gradle is that it
does give you enough rope to get tangled… though I’ve never outright hung
myself ;-)
Anyway… it seems Ant support is still widely used and wanted. So I would vote
against removing the new project support for Ant in favour of simply
discouraging it for new projects so newbies don’t start down that road.
Scott
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