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Ant is a Turing-complete language in XML. That is horrifying. It is bloated, difficult to read, tends towards duplication. It also doesn't do dependency manag
by revscat 13y ago
Ant is a Turing-complete language in XML.
That is horrifying.
It is bloated, difficult to read, tends towards duplication. It also doesn't do dependency management all that well, doesn't cache build results (so it does a complete rebuild every time), and is difficult to extend.
Not an Ant fan. I have used both Rake and Gradle successfully, and have been much happier with each. Their scripts tend to be (much) more compact, easier to read, and less prone to duplication.
- ndrake 13y agoI agree with a lot of your points, but can you explain the part about it doing a complete rebuild every time? It doesn't do that for me (unless I specifically tell it to).
- revscat 13y agoMy apologies: I just wrote a basic HelloWorld.java and a build.xml to go with it, and it looks like it doesn't recompile the class unless there is a change to the source .java file. So I was mistaken about that. Wonder what Gradle's caching, then?
- vorg 13y ago> Wonder what Gradle's caching, then? Let's hope it's catching another scripting language or two in its upcoming version 2 because having Groovy as the only option does it no favors.