Re: [platform-ant-dev] Launching external tools with launch configs?

["Patrick Mueller" <pmuellr@xxxxxxx>]

My reality:

- I actually keep projects in my workspace that contain ant tasks written in
Java, and do taskdef stuff to pull them into other ant tasks in my
development projects.  This is very kewl.  I can write Ant tasks without
having to bother jarring them up, giving them to people, telling them to
someone add them to their configuration ... I just say ... if you want to
run these ant tasks, just make sure you have project XYZ from repo ABC
loaded.

- Actually, I would >love< to be able to debug these Ant tasks.  The ones I
do are usually pretty simple, but still you get stuck on one, start printing
stuff out, ...; debugging would be simpler.

To me, the whole environment of writing tools for the tool in the tool, and
testing live, has finally gotten some of the Smalltalk IDE flavor back.
Yippee!! <g>

Bad news: I want more!

I want to be able to write my little tools in Java, Python, Javascript, etc,
having them homed in Projects, so I can easily muck with them, debug them,
commit/tag them, etc.  They would live with all my other development
projects.  I might want to hide them from, say, the Java perspective (even
the Resource perspective), but be able to get to them by flipping a filter
on, or opening a Tools Resource (via a Tools Nature).

Besides Java, I'd want to write in Java snippets as well; Java syntax, but
just raw code, no methods, classes (except anonymous inner ones), etc.

I want to hook these tools to various things in the environment, so I can
add my External Tool "Open Command Prompt" and "Open File Explorer Here" to
the context menu of a Project, and folders in projects, instead of having to
hunt it down in the generic "Tools" list.

I want to do all this declaratively, instead of having to type a wad of goo
in some wizard; I want to stick it in an .xml file that gets read
automagically, and makes my tool available where/when I want, so I can give
it (the project) to someone else and then THEY will have my tool.

I should be able to specify that I want to prompt the user for some info for
parameters.  Text prompters.  With password prompting, so I can prompt users
for userid/password (even clumsily through two prompters) to do programmatic
FTPs, CVS gets, etc, that require valid userid/passwords.

I should be able to prompt for parameters for Launchs as well; I want the
most recent X-number of parameter sets I used available in a drop-down
combo, so I don't have to retype stuff over and over.  I want to be able to
point Launchs at workspace artificacts.  Erm, well, I guess that would make
a Launch a Tool.  Cool.

I'd love to get some additional languages available for Tools.  Like Python.
I can do it today, but I have to put the whole freaking path-to-python in
the program name, and the python program itself in the arguments, which is
obviously not nice.  I'd rather have either the Tools bits figure out it's a
python file, from the extension, or from the system registry, or just try
running it like I can from the command-line since I have .py associated with
the right executable.

I will admit it; I am far too lazy to figure out plugins.  And don't have
the time.  But I'm a master of one-off toolsies.

Patrick Mueller
pmuellr@xxxxxxx

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Arthorne" <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxx>
To: <platform-ant-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: [platform-ant-dev] Launching external tools with launch
configs?


>
> From a technical point of view the operations are similar, but from a
> user's perspective the operations are different.  Launch configurations
are
> used for running/testing the stuff that the user is actually developing --
> the "product" that the user is creating using the IDE.  External tools, on
> the other hand, are really extensions to the IDE itself.  They generally
> operate on the stuff that the user is directly developing.  These tools
> often aren't located in the workspace themselves, but instead they operate
> on the contents of the workspace.  In some cases they will be transparent
> to the user (for example if they are scripts installed on the build path
as
> external tool builders).  Another distinction is that it would not
> generally be desirable or even feasible to launch external tools in debug
> mode.
>
> So yes, we did consider using launch configs, and that's some of the
> reasoning behind our decision not to use them.  It basically felt strange
> to be using one mechanism for two very different user concepts -- even
> though from a technology viewpoint they had some similar characteristics.
>
>
>
>
>                       Jared Burns
>                       <jared-eclipse@xxxxxxxx        To:
platform-ant-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
>                       m>                             cc:
>                       Sent by:                       Subject:
[platform-ant-dev] Launching external tools with
>                       platform-ant-dev-admin@         launch configs?
>                       eclipse.org
>
>
>                       09/24/2002 03:07 PM
>                       Please respond to
>                       platform-ant-dev
>
>
>
>
>
>
> It seems to me that the external tools framework is recreating a concept
> that
> already exists with launch configs.
>
> I'm curious to know if the ant developers considered using the launch
> configuration framework for ant/external tools. If so, can someone
> summarize
> why we opted to use a different solution? If not, what do people think of
> migrating the external tools code to use launch configs?
>
> Thanks,
> - Jared
>
>
>
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