Re: Giving an application a window icon in a sensible way

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:12:31 -0000, Twisted <twisted0n3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

wesley.hall@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> nobody has yet mentioned anything remotely resembling a URL for it, and
> it should be fairly obvious that a google search with the query "ant"
> is unlikely to produce anything relevant here.

Clearly you didn't even try.

Of course I didn't. A three letter query with a different, mainstream
dictionary meaning is far too likely to fail to be worth considering.

The way Google ranks pages is mostly dependent on how many sites link to a particular page. In the world of insect websites, there is probably not a single definitive page for the word "ant". In Java development, there is (the Apache Ant project home page). Also, the number of computing websites is disproportionate in comparison to the number of non-technical websites simply because the people who are interested in computing are much more likely to have the technical skills/knowledge/inclination required to create the web pages (and therefore to create the links to other computing sites).

Regardless, Patricia's advice to search for "java ant" should have been obvious.

Yes, it integrates easily with eclipse and any other serious IDE. It is
a tool for scripting your build process so, while there is a slight
overhead in writing the script (and it shouldnt be more than an hour or
two, infact, probably far less time than you have already spent arguing
the toss on this newgroup), once the script is written it will
significantly improve your build and testing cycle as you can use it to
automate your build, run your tests, generate your documentation,
create a Java webstart archive for your software, deploy it to an app
server (although this seems not to be required for your software) etc
etc.

There are a number of notes regarding the above:
1. An hour or two? I'll need some proof it can easily do something
amazing you can't easily do with Eclipse on its own before that looks
like a worthwhile investment of time.

This should do the job. Save the following as build.xml in the root of your project. Edit the properties at the top to match the paths in your project, and then run "ant" or "ant all" from the command line (from the root directory of your project). I don't remember how you set Eclipse up to use this, but it's trivial in IDEA and NetBeans, so I can't imagine that it's very difficult. If you need to extend this script, for example to add a manifest, I'm sure you can work out how from the examples in the manual (http://ant.apache.org/manual/index.html).

==== START HERE ====
<project name="twisted" default="jar" basedir=".">
<description>Example build.xml for Twisted</description>

<property name="src.dir" location="./src"/>
<property name="resources.dir" location="./resources" />
<property name="build.dir" location="./build"/>
<property name="classes.dir" location="${build.dir}/classes" />
<property name="target.jar" location="${build.dir}/twisted.jar" />

<!-- Builds everything from scratch. -->
<target name="all" depends="clean, jar" description="Builds everything from scratch."/>

<!-- Deletes all directories and files created by the build process. -->
<target name="clean" description="Remove all files created by the build process." >
<delete dir="${build.dir}" />
</target>

<!-- Build all Java code. -->
<target name="compile" description="Compile the Java source files.." >
<mkdir dir="${classes.dir}" />
<javac destdir="${classes.dir}"
debug="on"
deprecation="on"
source="1.5"
target="1.5"
srcdir="${src.dir}">
<include name="**/*.java" />
<compilerarg line="-Xlint:unchecked" />
</javac>
</target>

<!-- Build application JAR file. -->
<target name="jar" depends="compile" description="Create the application JAR file.">
<jar jarfile="${target.jar}">
<fileset dir="${classes.dir}" >
<include name="**/*.class" />
</fileset>
<fileset dir="${resources.dir}" includes="*" />
</jar>
</target>

</project>
==== END HERE ====

You will also be able to set up an use a continous integration
server that will periodically check out your code (assuming you are
running a version control system like CVS and subversion... and if not,
you should be)

For a one-person project? You're joking. It would take me weeks to
learn to use such a complex tool, and then I have to operate some kind
of a server, then some kind of equally unfamiliar client ... that even
has *security* implications, since I have to make sure that the server
isn't visible to the outside world if I start running a server of some
sort.

Version control (damage control) is always a good idea - I'd even argue that it is the most important development tool, ahead of IDEs and build tools. You can get plugins for Eclipse to integrate this stuff (one for Subversion is called Subclipse). But this is getting even more off-topic than we already were. I agree that the continuous integration stuff is over-kill for a one person project.

Dan.

--
Daniel Dyer
http://www.dandyer.co.uk
.

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