[Scons-users] Problems with the Java builder

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2014-01-24 at 21:42 +0100, Dirk Bächle wrote:
[…]

> For me, that's the basic question this discussion is all about. What 

> exactly is our vision for the Java support in SCons? Do we want to provide:

> 

> 1.) full support (-> lots of work, struggling to keep up with Maven/Gradle)

> 2.) basic (calling it experimental?) support, for simple Java/C/C++ mix 

> projects with just a few Java files

> 3.) no support at all, keeping the current state of the Java tools but 

> not maintaining them officially any longer (the same would hold for 

> similar languages like Scala, ...)


For me, 1 is a non-starter given the state of the world, especially the
resource for developing SCons and the mismatch of SCons infrastructure
and JVM-based language compilation.

2 would indicate a desire to take things further, which I think is a
waste of the very scarce SCons-related resources. I would suggest 3 is
not no support, just "maintenance mode" for what is there: i.e. no
active development but if people provide tested pull requests for bug
fixes or amendments then we review them and add them if there are no
obvious problems. 


> I don't want to push any decisions, but I'd like to have a clear goal 

> for development...which is also easy to communicate to the end-users. 

> So, option 1) and 3) are definitely my personal favourites.

> 

> Thinking really crazy, we could also embrace the idea of interfacing 

> Gradle from SCons. Or the other way round? Just sayin'... ;)


The other way round won't happen, I discussed this with Hans 14 months
ago, and they had a paying client for the Gradle native C++ support,
which is why Adam is developing the stuff. Given that Gradle is
supported by the commercial venture Gradleware which is making a nice
profit, they seem to have the right answer for the problem of "mostly
Java with a bit of C and C++".

The idea of SCons calling out to Gradle is hardly crazy. Actually it is
already possible with Command or even Exec. I must actually try this
idea out! 

-- 
Russel.
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