Java jlee on 19 Jun 2008 11:26 am
Is Apache Ant Dead/Dying?
Ant 1.7.0 was released way back in December 2006. Since then, there hasn’t been a single update. Not even a maintenance release. Now, ant is a relatively mature product. It’s been out a while and is quite stable. But it’s certainly not bug free. There’s not a lot of activity in the repository apart from the addition of ivy but after that went in activity dropped almost off the chart. I really do like ant despite my desire to see something else. But I fear that with the rising interest in maven, ant development has trailed off. And, to be clear, I despise maven. So, does any one know? The mailing lists at least show activity. Why no releases?
8 Responses to “Is Apache Ant Dead/Dying?”
on 19 Jun 2008 at 4:33 pm # jaco
have a look at http://www.gradle.org
on 19 Jun 2008 at 5:49 pm # jlee
Very interesting. I’ll give that a look. Thanks.
on 22 Jun 2008 at 12:07 pm # » Is Apache Ant Dead/Dying? Apache: What The World Is Saying About Apache
[...] Is Apache Ant Dead/Dying? Ant 1.7.0 was released way back in December 2006. Since then, there hasn’t been a single update. Not even a maintenance release. Now, ant is a relatively mature product. It’s been out a while and is quite stable. … [...]
on 23 Jun 2008 at 4:02 am # Stefan Bodewig
I just realized that we’ve never updated the site, DOH!
Ant 1.7.1beta has been in its second beta since a few weeks http://people.apache.org/dist/ant/v1.7.1beta2/ - and should be released pretty soon.
on 23 Jun 2008 at 7:16 am # Francois MAROT
There is GANT, based on ANT which can be really useful: http://gant.codehaus.org/
It uses GROOVY as a scripting language and eases the way to call ANT tasks.
on 23 Jun 2008 at 9:04 am # jlee
We’re evaluating gant at ${work}. We’re (well, my coworker) just trying to figure out how to nicely include base scripts and override certain targets/definitions. We’ll almost certainly end up with something groovy based, though, as I’ve been writing more and more groovy-based tasks in my build.xml. Groovy seems the most natural fit at this point.
on 23 Jun 2008 at 6:05 pm # Michael Easter
A big +1 for Gant. IMO, Gant may well point the way for the “next-gen” all-purpose build tool.
I gave a talk on this recently. My main analogy is this: imagine that Ant is a giant clockworks that keeps perfect time. We can add new gears to the clock, but it is so “high ceremony” that it is a deterrent. Also, doing anything programmatic with the AntContrib tasks is simply brutal.
By contrast, Gant is a “melted clock” from a Dali painting: it still keeps time (and provides access to the “old iron” of Ant), but it is far more pliable and flexible. It is trivial to extend and do logic/iterative tasks, because it is the full-power of Groovy.
on 23 Jun 2008 at 8:15 pm # bwtaylor
Here’s a blog I wrote a while back comparing ant, maven, and gant. http://blog.bwtaylor.com/java/2008/01/26/ant_maven_gant_pros_cons