| Forrestbot v2 |
| ============= |
| |
| Introduction |
| ------------ |
| |
| This directory contains an attempt at rewriting the Forrestbot using vanilla |
| Ant 1.6, making extensive use of the <import> task. |
| |
| Motivation |
| ---------- |
| |
| The old Forrestbot works by generating an Ant script with XSLT. This script |
| calls targets in templates.build.xml, which in turn calls targets in |
| forrest.build.xml. This scheme has two problems: |
| |
| - With three layers of indirection, this gets very hard to debug |
| |
| - It's inflexible. We cannot define project-specific tasks. We very much |
| need this missing flexibility, because a lot of projects (notably Cocoon) |
| call Forrest after customising the xdocs in their own Ant scripts. |
| |
| |
| Design |
| ------ |
| |
| Instead, Forrestbot v2 uses Ant 1.6's <import> to define a hierarchy of |
| scripts: |
| |
| forrest.build.xml |
| | |
| V |
| forrestbot.xml |
| | |
| V |
| xml-forrest.xml, xml-fop.xml, cocoon-site.xml, jakarta-poi.xml, ... |
| |
| |
| forrestbot.xml runs <import file="forrest.build.xml"/>, making it a logical |
| superset of forrest.build.xml. Scripts for building each Forrest-using |
| projects are likewise supersets of forrestbot.xml |
| |
| The nice thing about <import> is that overriding scripts can: |
| |
| - Redefine properties. Our project scripts can all redefine details like the |
| CVS location, where confirmation mail should go to, etc. |
| |
| - Override targets. Two uses: |
| |
| - Customize the forrestbot workflow. Want to get a project's contents |
| locally instead of from CVS? Just override the 'getsrc' method: |
| |
| <target name="getsrc" depends="local.getsrc"/> |
| |
| Similarly for 'deploy' (local, ftp, scp) and 'notify' (email or just |
| <echo>), |
| |
| - Project-specific stuff. Cocoon needs to copy lib/jars.xml to the xdocs |
| directory, xml-cocoon.xml would override the 'get-src' target from |
| forrestbot.xml, and do the copy (or invoke a Cocoon script to do it). |
| |
| |
| Status |
| ------ |
| |
| *Very* alpha. Requires the latest Ant, which I don't think Forrest's is. Only |
| a few project scripts implemented. |
| |
| |
| -- |
| $Date: 2003/10/20 11:43:58 $ |
