RE: Here is my Centipede scepticism

I think you folks are talking about two different user archetypes: (1) An
'open source' type development team, loosely tied and distributed and (2) a
commercial or in-house development team.

I've tried to use Centipede for commercial products, and I had the same
learning curve issues that Mr. Henricson speaks of.  That is to say, the
team did not respond well to the Centipede learning curve, for whatever
reasons (maybe the're dumb ;->).  However, I think most of these issues
could be resolved through better documentation and more examples,
particularly in how to utilize Centipede in more tightly integrated groups
(like a commercial software team).  For example:

* How do I know when to make a 'cent', versus when to use an existing
'cent'?
* How do I share an installation of centipede in an environment where
developers share common hardware (very typical in Solaris / UN*X shops)?
* How do I migrate my existing ANT mess into Centipede?
* How do I control the 'cent repositories', and why would I want to do that?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
> Of Nicola Ken Barozzi
> Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 5:35 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Here is my Centipede scepticism
> 
> 
> 
> Mats Henricson wrote, On 07/06/2003 1.41:
> ...>
> > Are you saying that now, suddenly, when you've started
> > to use Centipede, others in your team are chipping in, 
> modifying your 
> > build environment?
> > 
> > What I'm saying is that, everyone must learn the basics
> > of ant anyway, since Centipede builds upon ant, and since
> > ant is industry standard these days.
> > 
> > Now your team members also need to learn Centipede, and
> > you claim that is an improvement?
> 
> Centipede is not to learn. It's an Ant task that uses the Gump 
> descriptor. What do you have to learn?
> 
> >> Then I started working in open source, other people 
> projects. Their 
> >> ant scripts were cool, but hard for me to grok.
> > 
> > Harder than, say, code in general?
> 
> Yes. Look at the Cocoon build system. Look at the mails said on it on 
> cocoon-dev. You haven't got the problem? Fine, that's cool, 
> but others 
> do, and they are evidently not stupid.
> 
> >> Ant is great, but having the power of ant w/o having to hand write
> >> ant, is
> >> [IMHO] priceless..
> > 
> > But, that was what I tried to explain in my original
> > email, my javadoc ant target needs tweaking anyway.
> > And so would most other targets anyway. So, what have
> > you gained? Nothing, it seems to me. On the contrary,
> > since you've forced your co-workers to use something
> > that wasn't necessary.
> 
> Forced? You *can* use it, or not use it.
> 
> Cents are like Ant tasks, you use them if you need them.
> 
> >>     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.
> > 
> > It is NOT just adding something without the cost, since
> > it requires your co-workers to learn yet nother tool,
> > when ant in most cases is just fine.
> 
> In most small projects it's easy to start. But then imagine 
> to have to 
> manage 20 projects, each with their own buildfile changes, 
> and have them 
> compile every time, with the defined libraries...
> 
> Centipede is an Ant task. That can make "antlibs" that contain both 
> tasks and prepackaged targets.
> 
> If you don't want use target libraries and don't want to have 
> autodownload of jars and don't want to have common properties in a 
> common descriptor, fine. Then you don't need Centipede.
> 
> -- 
> Nicola Ken Barozzi                   [email protected]
>              - verba volant, scripta manent -
>     (discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
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