Tom Fennelly wrote:

If we were going to spend time on the build scripts, I'd vote for

looking at ways to simplify them altogether rather than patching them

more with timers etc.  I think once we simplify them, we'll be in a

better position to sort out issues around making it run quicker.

If we had the time to spend then I would agree, in fact my vote would be

a move to maven ;)

As things stand, an issue has been raised over the time the build takes

to run.  We can choose to rewrite it totally or just patch it up but our

time is the main constraint.  We may be able to put a 'band aid' on the

current build to alleviate this issue without spending too much time.

The product/build.xml has 33 targets in it >:o .  As I see it, the whole

thing is overly hierarchical with build.xml files at nearly every level

+ separate build.xml files for testing etc.  Many of the property names

are so long that it becomes very difficult to distinguish between them.

I think we're overly fixated with trying to make the build scripts super

intelligent ala "I want to be able to run any target and have the build

figure out what else needs to be run" resulting in every target being

dependent on every other target up and down the build.

Having the build files being hierarchical is not really the issue, it is

just an artifact of the way the codebase has evolved.  Having a common

base build file would also alleviate the issue of having different build

files for tests etc and make it almost irrelevant.

Sorry for going on a bit.  It's just that our build is something that

drives me bats.

KISS :-*

+1

Kev

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