Seriously, why? It uses XML. So instead of
copy(dir1, dir2)
You gotta write
<copy todir="dir2">
<fileset dir="dir1" />
</copy>
It has a useless conditional logic. You cannot just say if-else. You have to define a conditional target based on whether a property is set or not. Did they go through all these trouble just so that some incompetent developer won’t screw up? The more I use Ant the more I feel it’s not the right tool. Don’t tell me Maven. It’s better. But not too much better. It still uses XML. Why are people so possessed about XML? What’s wrong with building with an easy to understand scripting language? That way you have the power of a real language rather than a bunch of verbose XML files and a limited set of library. In fact, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m writing a Ruby script to generate the deployment descriptors for Gigaspaces (hey, I’m becoming like Alan Covington!). It’s one step further even though the main build is still Ant. But who knows, I might change all our Ant build scripts to something like Raven.
