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Build Java Projects with Raven
Say "nevermore" to inexpressiveness and use Ruby to build your Java applications
Ant is arguably the de facto build tool for the Java™ platform; however, other build tools, which support a more expressive paradigm that XML lacks, are entering the scene. Automation expert Paul Duvall describes how Raven, a build platform built on top of Ruby, leverages the power of a full-featured programming language with the simplicity of a build-centric Domain Specific Language.
Paul writes:
I have an existing Java project, and over the past few years I've meticulously maintained an Ant build script for it. I like the plethora of tasks available for Ant; however, I often find that the XML syntax of Ant scripts is somewhat onerous to write. Further, Ant's XML heritage is occasionally limiting when it comes to expressiveness. In fact, when I find myself needing a higher degree of flexibility (say with conditional logic), I'm often forced to write a custom task or embed logic within Ant's script task using Groovy, for instance.
The article discusses a list of common Java tasks, like javac, javadoc, war, and junit. Raven may provide a more expressive alternative than XML-based build systems by leveraging the flexibility and expressiveness of Ruby and custom DSLs.
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Message #268332
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Re: Build Java Projects with Raven
I have to maintain a messy ant file, and I cannot oblige other devs to download raven/gant/whatever and set up a environment variable. I would like an ant task that enables me to run raven tasks in a self-contained way.
Other thing that would be nice would be a ant2raven converter.
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Message #268338
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Re: Build Java Projects with Raven
Raven's pretty neat.
The problems as I see them:- Ruby's expressiveness is great. But... I keep thinking there's a DSL out there that doesn't involve Ruby syntax...
There's always gradle if you want groovy but not gant: http://www.gradle.org/
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Message #268349
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new build system?
Guys, what would you think about discussing a new build system, one that used something closer to english to build things, and one that sort of did the thing correctly?
Think of dependency management along rpm's lines:
myapp:
requires: logger
servlet
jcr-impl and...logn
provides: logger ...andjackrabbit:
requires: logger
lucene
jcr
provides: jcr
jcr-impl
You can see a sort of OSGi-like provision capability here - imagine using OSGi for the build system, and having the OSGi container pulling in the dependencies and fulfilling them as it can.
Anyone want to talk about requirements and implementation plan? Maven's the right idea, done the wrong way, and with the wrong audience in mind. Let's fix it.
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Message #268353
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Re: Build Java Projects with Raven
Few comments.
1) Raven has been abandoned in favor of builder: http://incubator.apache.org/buildr/
2) buildr has all the dependency management stuff you guys are talking about
3) I personally found buildr overkill (as I do Maven), so I noticed that builder uses the "AntWrap" gem. So I wrote a build file using Ruby's Rake and the AntWrap gem. Makes translating from Ant easy.
Here's a snippet of a ruby rake file that has java targets:
require 'rake'
require 'rake/testtask'
require 'rake/rdoctask'
require 'rubygems'
require 'antwrap'
require 'java'
web_dir = "../web"
common_lib_dir = "../lib"
@ant = Antwrap::AntProject.new(:ant_home=>'/usr/share/ant')
@ant.mkdir(:dir => "classes")
@ant.path(:id => "common.class.path"){
@ant.fileset(:dir => "#{common_lib_dir}"){
@ant.include(:name => "**/*.jar")
}
}
desc "clean the classes directory"
task :clean do
@ant.delete(:dir => "classes")
end
desc "generate war file"
task :war =>[:compile] do
@ant.war(:update => false, :destfile=>"ei.war", :webxml=>"../web/WEB-INF/web.xml"){
@ant.fileset(:dir => web_dir)
}
end
task :default => [:compile]
desc "compile java classes"
task :compile do
puts "compiling java classes to [classes]..."
@ant.javac(:srcdir => "../src", :destdir => "classes", :deprecation=>true, :debug=>true, :fork=>true){
@ant.classpath(:refid => "common.class.path")
@ant.compilerarg(:value =>"-Xlint")
}
end
end
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Message #268379
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Re: new build system?
Guys, what would you think about discussing a new build system, one that used something closer to english to build things, and one that sort of did the thing correctly?
Hi Joseph,
I think we're stuck on the way to the cusp of component orientation and the build systems pretty much reflect that reality. Given that we haven't figured out component orientation (in practice) build systems conflate all the aspects of building a complex system.
Imagine a hypothetical virtual build system for a modern skyscraper if it had to include cement mix and form pouring factors alongside of high-level system integration aspects -- you'd get something along the lines of ant (and perhaps) maven ...
I would suggest that the community focus on getting component orientation working. Given that, each level of construction (low level object compositions; component packaging; and finally system assembly) each would have their own (probably) simple and (definitely) focused specialized build system.
Note that such an approach would also (intrinsically) address testing at the appropriate level.
If that doesn't happen, then sure, we could use the OSGi approach, or even the JEE approach (what are those DDs but depenedency patches?), to assemble a large system from pre-built and custom pseudo-components. But the inherent complexity will not go away.
RoR, which was the 'practical' answer to JEE complexity, reduced complexity at the logical level by adopting a finite set of canonical patterns. Naturally, we could do the same with the system build issue. But wait, isn't that called Maven? ;)
/R
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Message #268606
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Re: new build system?
+1
Yes, Maven is a bit harder to learn than ant but it is the best solution on the market.
raven sounds like reinventing the wheel, and IMHO the wheel isn't very round ;-)
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Message #268712
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Expressiveness for filesystem tasks
One thing sometimes found lacking in both Maven and Ant is the limitation of Ant Path expressions for specifying directories and files.
I've built a library called FSPath which uses 'XPath like' expressions to do filesystem tasks such as searching, copying, moving and deleting.
http://sugar.sourceforge.net/fspath/
IMHO, Maven and Ant may lack expressiveness in certain areas, but there's no reason why little languages can't be plugged in to bridge those gaps.
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Message #269547
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Re: new build system?
Here are some points:
- as it is only Ant, Java and Ant knowledge is enough to use, understand, extend and debug el4ant (development begins because maven1 is too limited, and maven2 was beta)
- project model is defined with XML namespaces, extensible with plugins
- it supports multi-projects (called modules in el4ant)
- you can define many runtime targets per module (Main Class, J2EE container, JUnit test suite...) thanks to execution unit concept (think about client/server targets as an example)
- you have fine control on what is included in each jar, war, ear
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