RE: Here is my Centipede scepticism

	OK, here is my scepticism. I know I'm talking
	about something that I don't fully understand,
	and it may start a thread with an overwhelming
	number of messages I can't respond to, but you
	asked for it! :-)

These ideas are standalone, no need for concern about what they might start.

	I think Centipede is fundamentally wrong in two
	ways:

	1. It is trying to solve something that isn't a
	    problem.

I love ant, ant scripting it easy, ant tasks are easy & the documentation
clear. I agree with all that. I made my ant scripts do everything but make
coffee, they'd FTP, they'd mail, they'd extract version out of class via
byte code, they'd compile JDK1.3 or JDK 1.4, they'd do it all. I was proud
of my ant prowess, it was cool to hack ant script... but I got tired of ant
scripting once I got about 1000 lines of ant, or when I was on my tenth
project where I'd cut-n-paste & tweak, or I'd copy. I tried persuading
others in my team to chip in, and use it for their projects, they couldn't
grok my ant -- it was too much. I'd created an unmanageable behemoth.

Then I started working in open source, other people projects. Their ant
scripts were cool, but hard for me to grok.

Ant is great, but having the power of ant w/o having to hand write ant, is
[IMHO] priceless..

	2. It is trying to automate/simplify something
	    that is always going to have to be customized
	    by hand.

Sounds like an argument against other build tools, not Centipede. Centibuild
is just ant w/ optional imports. You want your hand crafted ant script, then
paste it in. Centipede compliments ant w/ some metadata parsing into
properties, w/ optional/re-usable scriptlets, it doesn't stop you from using
plain ant.

Centipede has it's flaws, and it id far from done, but I believe it adds
real value on top of ant.

regards,

Adam



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