Reduce cut and paste waste was: Here is my Centipede scepticism

see 
http://nick.chalko.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2003/06/05#IsCentipedeTryingToSolveANonProblem
Mats Henricson wrote 
<http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=5176132>:

    I think Centipede is fundamentally wrong in two ways:
    1. It is trying to solve something that isn't a problem.
    To me, at least, ant is liberatingly simple. I would never dream of
    extending a hierarchy of messy makefiles, but ant is so simple. The
    ant documentation is pretty good. I have added a fair amount of
    standard and custom targets, and only in a few cases have I had
    problems. 

Centipede is ant. Just a handfull of custom targets, tasks and 
properties. But the magic is you don't have to cut-and-paste the targets 
into every project you build. If you want Javadoc, just <importcent 
name="java"/> and run cent javadoc

Mats goes on to say

    2. It is trying to automate/simplify something that is always going
    to have to be customized by hand.
    Take my JavaDoc ant task, as an example. It contains a LOT of things
    that are special to me and my project. I believe there is no way you
    can make it simpler than it already is. 

  <target name="javadoc" depends="compile" description="Create Javadoc API documentation">
    <mkdir          dir="${dist.home}/docs/api"/>
    <javadoc sourcepath="${src.home}"
                destdir="${dist.home}/docs/api"
           packagenames="*"
                 author="true"
                version="true"
                    use="true"
              protected="true"
             splitindex="true"
            windowtitle="UPL code">
      <doctitle>UPL code</doctitle>
      <header>UPL code</header>
      <bottom>< ![CDATA[<i>Copyright &#169; 2003 Mats Henricson. All Rights Reserved.</i>] ]></bottom>
      <link href="http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/"/>
      <link href="http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/2.2/javadoc/"/>
      <link href="http://java.sun.com/j2ee/sdk_1.3/techdocs/api/"/>
      <link href="http://java.sun.com/xml/docs/api/"/>
      <link href="http://www.junit.org/junit/javadoc/3.8.1/"/>
      <link href="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/docs/api/"/>
      <link href="http://xml.apache.org/xerces2-j/javadocs/api/"/>
      <link href="http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/apidocs/"/>
      <link href="http://tyrex.exolab.org/api/"/>
      <link href="http://hibernate.bluemars.net/hib_docs/api/"/>
      <classpath refid="compile.classpath"/>
    </javadoc>
  </target>

I agree often you will want to do your own thing. No problem use the 
Javadoc target you just built. But instead of cut and pasting it 
everywhere. Make a cent out of it and share it between your projects. I 
have several custom cents I use at work.

But perhaps the centipede Javadoc target is good enough. Lets take a 
look. Here is the Javadoc target from java.cent 
<http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/krysalis/krysalis-cents/java/src/xbuild.xml?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup>

 <!-- =================================================================== -->
 <!-- Creates the API documentation                                       -->
 <!-- =================================================================== -->
  <target name="javadocs"
      description="Generates the API documentation in javadoc format">
      
      <if>
         <not> <isset property="java.cent.javadoc.overview"/></not>
         <then>
              <style in="module.xml"
                     out="${java.cent.work.dir}/javadocs/overview.html"
                     style="${java.cent.dir}/resources/stylesheets/module2overview.xsl">
              </style>
              <property name="java.cent.javadoc.overview" 
                        value="${java.cent.work.dir}/javadocs/overview.html"/>	
         </then>	
	</if>

      
    <mkdir dir="${java.cent.javadocs.dir}"/>
    <javadoc packagenames="${jxpath:/references/module.xml/root/module/project[@name=$project.name]/package}.*"
             sourcepath="${project.src.dir}"
             destdir="${java.cent.javadocs.dir}"
             author="true"
             version="true"
             use="true"
             failonerror="true"
             noindex="true"
             overview="${java.cent.javadoc.overview}"
             source= "${build.compiler.source}"
             group="${centipede.tools.java.cent.javadocs.group}"
             windowtitle="${project.name} ${project.version.package-version}  API"
             stylesheetfile="${java.cent.dir}/resources/stylesheets/javadoc.css">
 
     <classpath>
       <path refid="${project.name}.classpath"/> 
     </classpath>

    <doctitle>${project.name} ${project.version.package-version}  API</doctitle>
    <bottom><![CDATA[<center><i>Copyright &#169; ${YEAR} ${xgump.module.vendor}. 
    All Rights Reserved.</i></center>]]></bottom>
    <header><![CDATA[${project.name} ${project.version.package-version}]]></header>
    <footer><![CDATA[${project.name} ${project.version.package-version}]]></footer>
    <tag name="todo" scope="all" description="To do:" />
    <link offline="true" 
          href="http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.4/docs/api/" 
          packagelistLoc="${java.cent.dir}/resources/jdk14-project.version.package-list"/>
      
    </javadoc>
  </target>

This target does a pretty good job of producing generic Javadocs. Take a 
look at the Javadocs for the Krysalis Sample 
<http://www.krysalis.org/templates/krysalis-project/javadocs/index.html> 
project. Note the automatic version labeling. We also optionally create 
a simple overview.html from the infomation in the gump module.xml file. 
The main deficiency I see is, we only link to jdk 1.4 and jdk 1.4 is 
hardcoded. Looks like something we should fix. Perhaps you could supply 
a patch. ;-)

I got tired of cutting and pasting the same Javadoc target into every 
build.xml I wrote. I never kept them all uptodate. It was a giant 
headache. So I joined the Krysalis <http://krysalis.org> team. I have 
only worked on one Javadoc target since then. The one in java.cent 
<http://www.krysalis.org/cents/cents/java/index.html>.