Re: State of maven build system, gradle and Apache commens

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hartmut Goebel <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 02.09.2016 um 13:48 schrieb Ricardo Wurmus:
>
>     
>         > I found all of these need intervention for building, as there is no
>> "install" target (maybe I missed something). Echo of the packages
>> behaves a bit different (e.g. different directory names), while
>> sharing some common patterns. I'll attach my WIP for your convenience.
>
>     “ant-build-system” creates a “build.xml” with an install target when
> “#:jar-name” is provided.  This is useful in case there’s only a
> “pom.xml” and the package provides a single jar.
>
> Yes, this is what you wrote earlier today. But most of these (four)
> commons packages habe a build.xml, But they behave differently. Some
> build into "target", some into "dist/", some put docs in "apidocs/"
> others into "docs/api/".
>
> Or do you suggest to use a build.xml created be ant-build-system?

This depends on the package and the expected output (e.g. one jar file
to be installed).  The build.xml generated by the ant-build-system does
not build docs because it’s supposed to work for most Java packages.

We could change the ant-build-system such that a smarter “build.xml”
would be generated, but I think if a project provides a “build.xml” we
should be using it, unless it’s really defective or close to useless.

Another option is to write procedures to parse the “build.xml” and add
custom targets, but since I don’t know what to expect in the build files
I cannot think of a general approach that would be useful here.

~~ Ricardo