Build Tools

What's the current state of Java build tools?

Performance is not always optimal.

programming in xml doesn't make sense
big ball of ant problem
- the 9000 line "untouchable" collection of build script
few conventions
- lots of rope to hang yourself
hard to refactor
ill-conceived
- even JDD has disowned it

good conventions but hard to diverge from the norm
- simple things are simple
- moderate things are really hard (write a plugin)
- hard things are virtually impossible
too much voodoo
not enough docs
- hard to find where/how to configure things
kind of buggy
- (I think this was attributed to plugins)
declarative model is too strict
- flexibility is needed here
appeals to the less experienced
- can get yourself in trouble if you assume it all just works

testing your build?
- once it gets really big you need to be able to reason about your build.
- tests could allow you to refactor/optimise/etc without breaking anything
- testing is much simpler with a real language
  - if you're stuck with ant you could use antunit (http://ant.apache.org/antlibs/antunit/)
we really need a first class language for flexibility
- programming in xml doesn't make sense
- pure declarative model solves some problems but reduces flexibility
auto include of rake files allows easy factoring
possible to separate the definition of dependencies - who depends on me?
builtin namespaces (ie db:*, test:*)
plugins in ruby are really simple
- monkey patching
file dependency checking is built in
- what changed? do it anyway not optimal speed
auto checking of timestamps

posix only (no windows yet)
- installing cygwin is a solution
- write adapters for the commands used (ssh, ftp, etc)
version 2.0 just released
peepcode demo (http://topfunky.com/clients/peepcode/free-episodes/peepcode-free-deprec.mov)
- building ubuntu box remotely via ssh
- using the deprec gem (http://www.deprec.org/)
convincing management that using a Ruby tool on a Java project is a good thing
- it's often easier to just do it and show the benefits
- ask for forgiveness rather than permission