My review of Ant - The Definitive Guide got published by Slashdot with minor editorial changes.
As usual, the comments on the Slashdot book review provide interesting insight into what the developer community, not just a specific segment closely associated with the technology covered by the book, thinks about it. After reviewing these comments, I noted following points:
- Ant not good for build systems requiring both dependency driven and procedural (involving looping and conditional) actions. Need a build framework invocable from general purpose scripting language. More gripes on lack of conditionals.
- Is XML syntax good or bad for Ant? You decide after reading this, this and this.
- Ant versus make. Ant is no make, but includes those capabilities. Scons is an alternative for Python fans. BTW, there are people who like Ant over Make.
- Ant and Maven.
- Need a GUI for Ant. Personally, I am perfectly happy without GUI.
Well, not much discussion on the book review or the book itself, though.