Re: Java 1.3 Mark S. Miller (markm@caplet.com)
Fri, 02 Jun 2000 11:10:10 -0700

At 10:39 AM 6/2/00 , Ben Laurie wrote:
>Speaking from experience, Ant is substantially easier to maintain than
>make.

Ok, I'll certainly take your experience over my off the cuff reaction. But WHY did they make it so unreadable? What do they gain by basing it on XML? Would layering a specialized surface syntax on Ant indeed greatly improve it, or am I misunderstanding the nature of the tool?

In any case, the alternative I'm considering is just bash without make. Given that incremental re-making isn't an issue, is there any reason to prefer Ant to bash?

         Cheers,
         --MarkM