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> No, it's just the opposite. All the dependencies and project structure are right there in declarative XML. It's what make should have been. When make was wri
by apk17 11y ago
> No, it's just the opposite. All the dependencies and project structure are right there in declarative XML. It's what make should have been.
When make was written most machines would have just exploded at the sight of a typical build.xml, and downloading tens or hundreds of packages from anywhere was simply out of the question.
Also, 'dependency' means something completeley different in make as opposed to maven - I don't think modern build systems do even care much for make-style deps.
- lmm 11y ago> When make was written most machines would have just exploded at the sight of a typical build.xml, and downloading tens or hundreds of packages from anywhere was simply out of the question. Sure. But the notion of doing things declaratively existed (Prolog predates make by five years). And the biggest difference between make and the scripts that preceded it is that it's more structured, with a graph of targets rather than just a list of commands. If you add the ability to reuse libraries of targets (something that sort-of exists via implicit make rules), restrict targets to something a little more structured than random shell commands, and - yes - add the ability to fetch dependencies (including target definitions) from a repository, you end up with something very like maven.