FW: Re: [PATCHES] Ant configuration

I meant to send this to the group...

-----FW: <XFMail(dot)20011019104543(dot)ned(dot)wolpert(at)knowledgenet(dot)com>-----

Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:45:43 -0700 (MST)
Sender: wolpert(at)wolpert(dot)knowledgenet(dot)corp
From: Ned Wolpert <ned(dot)wolpert(at)knowledgenet(dot)com>
To: Barry Lind <barry(at)xythos(dot)com>
Subject: Re: [JDBC] [PATCHES] Ant configuration

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Two cents with of thought... :-)

On 18-Oct-2001 Barry Lind wrote:
>> * People with Java background probably know Ant better that
>> 'make'. Ant seems to become 'build tool of choice' in
>> Java world.
>
> Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that either of these arguments is true.
> I have seen make used by more projects than ant, and a developer
> building postgres from source, certainly needs to be familiar with make.

Ant is great in a pure-java project. I have seen ant used as the primary
build engine in many Java projects, and it works great for me. But, here are
some (conflicting) thoughts.

1) To some degree, the make process of PostgreSQL should be consistant. Ant
and Make are two seperate building systems. Its easier to put the JDBC driver
into make than it is to put postgresql into ant.

2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but currently, Make is needed to run Ant in the
JDBC driver anyways, right? (To grab the version numbers and set the properties
when running ant)

Yet...

3) Java is system independant, and the JDBC driver is a client piece. I should
be able to compile the JDBC driver outside of PostgreSQL server if I wanted to,
right? Example, I can't compile PostgreSQL on windozes 95. But I could
compile the JDBC driver via ant if Java and ant are installed. (Or, rather, I
should be able to)

4) Ant doesn't need to be 'installed' in other projects. Rather, they include
the needed ant libs in the CVS, which is allowed by the license, and create a
build script to call the ant process to build. (Usually a build.sh and a
build.bat) We could do that to also set the version numbers rather than have
make do it.

I guess I can make an argument either way. The real way to answer this is to
ask if one cares if you can build the JDBC driver on window's only platform
without cygwin installed.

-If the answer is no, that one wouldn't build the JDBC driver without building
the rest of postgresql, then the build process should be tied to make, like
the rest of postgresql, for simplisity in maintence.

-However, if the JDBC driver should be able to be built without having to
build postgresql, (on platforms without UNIX-compatiablity layer like cygwin)
for client use only, then yes, use Ant to achive platform-independance.

I'm lucky enough to only work with Linux, so I don't really care on the outcome
of this :-) I can work with either.

Virtually,
Ned Wolpert <ned(dot)wolpert(at)knowledgenet(dot)com>

D08C2F45: 28E7 56CB 58AC C622 5A51 3C42 8B2B 2739 D08C 2F45
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE70GbGiysnOdCML0URAnl5AJ9VkJs0QXr1GEzzFVxW5CzNLDRl1wCfbOmM
O2tENKYPCsDAx6I42NoYh5U=
=CSwI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--------------End of forwarded message-------------------------