[platform-ant-dev] feedback

["Shackelford, John-Mason" <ShacJo@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings,

I am now running II20021114 and am impressed with the usability enhancements
you've made.

I really liked being able to set my own ANT_HOME in the preferences. When I
set ANT_HOME to my own install all of the JARs in the ant/lib dir showed up
in the runtime classpath window. Nice touch!

I have had a few problems though. I should open bugzilla records for them
but when I get some time but I want to send off my suggestions while I am
thinking about them.

1. When I go to Launch Configuration, assign select a build file--I like
being able to select build files both within and outside of the workspace!
Thanks!--and then on the Targets pane select and unselect the "Run Default
Target" option every target in the build file is added to "Targets to
execute area." When I first used this I thought that I needed to select a
target and then hit "add" but this opened a second dialog. Perhaps 25899
referring to this problem.

2. Neither AntView nor the Launch Configuration seem to be able to resolve a
task that is defined in an XML entity include. The task is defined via a
taskdef line the build file and it runs smoothly under Ant 1.5.x at the
command line. It is included in a Jar in my ANT_HOME lib directory which
shows up in the "runtime classpath" dialog in Eclipse. Furthermore I have
even added the the task in the Tasks pane in the Ant Preferences. I see this
behavior with nearly twenty different build files. I am unable even to
launch Ant targeting the build files as I get a message in both AntView and
Launch Configuration which says taskdef class
file:C:/esbe/build/build.xml:47: taskdef class
org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.pvcs2.Pvcs2 cannot be found. 

I later discover that this was just because I did not add the .class
extension to the name of the task's class in the task definition dialog.
IMHO this dialog provides no real value and instead is a source of confusion
and easily made mistakes. I'd recommend removing it. (This would address
17782, 25652.)

3. I did have Ant View lock up Eclipse me the first time I tried to open it.
I haven't been able to reproduce this yet, but I'll work on it.

4. When using the AntView property page clicks on the OK do nothing and the
only way to close the dialog is to hit the cancel button or click the close
window widget. I seem to be having trouble reproducing this now but I have
had this happen on several different installs and on several different
boxes.

5. There appears to be no way to open AntView from the Navigator View.


Thanks for your hard work on the Ant portion of Eclipse. You've made great
improvements. I am enjoying Eclipse more than ever!



John-Mason Shackelford

Software Developer
NCS Pearson - Measurement Services
2510 North Dodge St.
Iowa City, IA 52245
319-354-9200x6214
shacjo@xxxxxxx


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