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

On Sat, 07 Jun 2003 23:43:56 -0700
Mats Henricson <[email protected]> wrote:

> Nick Chalko wrote:
> > Mats Henricson wrote:
> >> This page currently lists 8 different JavaDoc
> >> versions:
> >>
> >> http://www.junit.org/junit/javadoc/index.htm
> > 
> > If we could get a MetaData repository to keep track of this kind of 
> > version information we could do it automatically.   There has been some 
> > talk of this kind of stuff over at apache.  Gump is really focused on 
> > the "latest" version.  We may need to modify it decriptors to accomdate 
> > version specific meta data.
> 
> I think so, because in many settings you are
> pretty careful not to use the bleeding edge
> versions of all jar files. I was pretty nervous,
> for example, when I started to use the latest
> Castor, released just a few days ago.
> 
> > Agree cut and paste works,  but I got sick of it.  It is to much 
> > effort.  If centipede add more complexity than it saves,  don't use it.
> 
> Can't really see the problem! I have exactly
> two javadoc ant tasks. One at work, one at
> home. If I ever start a new project, then I
> would copy it, once, and tweak it a little.
> I'd guess it takes about 5 minutes, to get
> it all right.
> 

But what if you want to modify your javadoc task (I am no java programmer so
maybe my comment does not apply) e.g. to have another copyright notice. 
You have to step through all your copied and pasted files and change that manually
(or write a batch job to do that for you). With centipede you would change that 
only in one file ... 

I think it is like all re-use stuff. One only sees the need to have designed it more
reusable when it is too late ... everything works with copy and paste as long as you
don't have to modify the template ... if you have to modify the template you have to
do it everywhere which is very error prone and could be heavily time consuming.

But admittingly not everywhere is reusable design the holy grale ... one has to
decide it from case to case ... but I want to have the power to do so if I want to ...

Alex


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