RFC: Package structure of ant

[Wolfgang Baer]

Hi all,

Arnaud Vandyck wrote:
> Michael Koch wrote:
> 
>>>On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 04:03:43PM -0400, Barry Hawkins wrote:
>>>
>>>>Jerry Haltom wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Almost every package I have seen uses ant as a lib.
>>>>>In fact, name on that doesn't?
>>>>>The build scripts for most packages invoke the VM and point
>>>>>it to the Ant library. They don't invoke the Ant binary wrapper.
> 
> 
> You are talking about CDBS, aren't you? If ant was in main at the time
> Stefan Gybas wrote the cdbs rules for ant, I don't think he would call
> ant that way but he would have use the launcher script (sorry for the
> english grammar, I think I messed up;-))
> 
> 
>>>>>Eclipse is the same. It has no need for the binary Ant wrapper.
> 
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Eclipse calls the main ant launcher
> class, not the *bash* wrapper script
> 
> 
>>>>>Just pointing this out.
>>>>
>>>>[...]
>>>>While I agree that technically Ant is invoked as a collection of Java
>>>>classes that could be considered a library in the technical sense, we
>>>>are always invoking the main classes that allow it to function as a
>>>>build tool, like make.  Users would view Ant logically in the same way
>>>>they view make; a build tool.  Very few users of Debian will be invoking
>>>>ant the way we do as package maintainers - except for the really sick
>>>>ones 8^).
> 
> 
> Barry I totally agrre
> 
> 
>>>Right. Full ACK.
> 
> 
> And I see Michael too ;-)
> 

As most of the active pkg-java maintainers have aggreed to the second
approach:

ant - scripts and core tasks
ant-doc - javadoc and manuals
ant-optional - optional tasks

I will prepare such a package for further discussion and then come
back to you with a download location for review ...

Wolfgang