The Maven guys have got one thing (and others, I’m not being mean) right – we reinvent the wheel too much on Java projects.
Joe Schmetzer has an Ant Script Library. And Pascal here has had a crack at the problem of Ant Script reuse.
Seems a bit 2002-esque to write an Ant build from scratch these days.
Update: this tweet from JTF suggests another tool.
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Grails seems to get this right. It dictates the file layout and provides canned targets for common tasks, as Maven does, but doesn’t try to maintain a dependency registry or overcomplicate your build with a maze of obscure configuration. It’s certainly nice to build and deploy without having written a line of build code.
I think it’s the way forward. As Chris pointed out in the podcast I blogged yesterday, the build is becoming a first class citizen (well, I could name some organisations where it isn’t, but they already reap the problems that they’ve sown). When that happens, things tend to get fixed pretty quick.
The Maven guys understood the need for a standard life cycle. Given that, it is possible to create a template based Ant build environment. It’s all about adopting and adhering to a common convention that includes user-definable extension points.
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