RFC: Package structure of ant

[Michael Koch]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 12:21:15PM +0200, Wolfgang Baer wrote:
> [CC'ing Jerry atm as I don't know if he is subscribed]
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> there were already some discussions about the package structure of ant.
> A little bit on IRC and a privat email exchange between Arnaud, Jerry
> and me.
> 
> I will transfer this now to the pkg-java-maintainers list ...
> 
> Currently ant source package builds:
> 
> ant - includes the scripts and the manual and the optional task jars
> ant-doc - the javadocs
> 
> libant1.6-java (other source package) - the core tasks jars
> 
> What we want is to build everything from one source package.
> However the binary package structure needs to be discussed.
> 
> I proposed to keep ant and ant-doc basically the same and just
> splitt the jars out into library packages. One for the core tasks
> and one for the optional tasks:
> 
> ant - scripts and manual
> ant-doc - javadocs
> libant-core-java - core tasks jars
> libant-optional-java - optional tasks jars
> 
> Arnaud mentioned that the manual should be moved to ant-doc. This
> however would result in a mainly only scripts ant package with only
> a very small size ... This problem shows up regularly for example in
> the wishlist bugs of libxalan2-java to provide a commandline script.
> This however cannot be placed in the libxalan2-java package and a
> xalan2 package just for the wrapper script is also not a good idea.
> 
> Another strcuture would be:
> 
> ant - scripts and core tasks jars
> ant-doc - javadoc and manual
> ant-optional - optional tasks jars
> 
> One problem in question is the java-policy. Is ant a program with its
> own auxiliary jars or is it a library (which would mean we have to
> name the packages libant... and could not include the core tasks jars
> in the ant binary package). If I understand the java policy correct.

IMO it is both.

> Please comment ...

What about putting the scripts into libant-core-java and provide "ant" as 
virtual package too?

To be serious. ant is very special and we should think about allowing an
exception from the Java policy. IMO the second proposal is the better one.


Regards,
Michael
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