Tim Boudreau's Blog

J2SE Archives

What if we built Java code with...Java?

So he created the Gosling project. It's pretty embryonic - and I think some of the file and resource classes could be replaced by straight usage of things like javax.tools.FileObject, but it has a nice simplicity. Here's the constructor for Gosling's own build to build itself. It has a similar feel to what Jon did in designing Wicket's APIs:

    public GoslingProject() {
        final Folder root = new Folder("/Projects/gosling/workspace/gosling");
        final Folder source = root.folder("src");
        final Folder lib = root.folder("lib");
        final Folder target = root.folder("target");
        add(new JavaApplicationBuilder() {
            @Override
            protected Set getDependencies() {
                final ResourceDescriptorSet dependencies = new ResourceDescriptorSet();
                dependencies.add(Apache.apache.wicket.core.development.resources());
                dependencies.add(Apache.apache.wicket.extensions.development.resources());
                return dependencies;
            }

            @Override
            protected Set getJars() {
                return lib.nestedJars();
            }

            @Override
            protected Folder getSourceFolder() {
                return source;
            }

            @Override
            protected Folder getTargetFolder() {
                return target;
            }
        });
}

I mean, the appeal of things like Ant is that many things are built in a pretty similar way; Maven is even more "my way or the highway" in that regard. I use (and sometimes like) both of them. And in theory an Ant XML script (xml script - now there's an oxymoron) is human readable - although I challenge anyone to make heads or tails of this in ten minutes. It certainly beats Make and tab vs. space madness. There's an argument that it's toolable - that a tool can analyze an Ant script. This seems to me to be a red-herring if you do a design like Wicket or Gosling use - where you know that the entire state you need to analyze is going to be set up in the constructor of a known class of a known type. The Javac Tree API may not be for the faint of heart, but analyzing the closure of a constructor is perfectly doable.

My point is that Ant doesn't really deliver the clarity it promised except in the most trivial of cases. You could have at least as much clarity with plain-old Java code - you just need to start from a good design so the code can speak for itself. And a design where all targets will be added to the build in the constructor is pretty darned clear. Isn't one of the things the agile crowd talks about a lot letting code speak for itself?

Not to mention that running javac in-process ought to be blazingly fast. And that such a project could import and call existing Ant tasks to do things with a thin adapter layer - so anybody's custom tasks or missing functionality could be handled leveraging stuff that's already out there.

It seems like a pretty nice idea to me.

NetBeans now has Mac-friendly key bindings

Specifically what's different:

• Ctrl -> Command - everything that normally maps to Ctrl will use the Command key instead, except where that's impossible (Command-H always hides the app, Command-Q always quits, Command-~ always changes windows, that sort of thing)
• Command-G maps to Find-Next
• Command-R maps to Replace (Ctrl-H, the windows key binding, works as well)
• Cursor control keys in the editor are the default mac ones - Option-Left-arrow to skip to next word, etc. (Option==Alt)

Also, dialog buttons will now appear in the correct order on Macs, with OK on the right.

Alas, these changes will not be in NetBeans 4.0 Beta 2 - I missed the cut-off, but it's better to review things properly than to rush. They will be in Beta 3.

Please give it a try, and let me know if any of your habitual keystrokes are doing the wrong thing. You can download tonight's build here. Be sure to select "Daily" from the "Build Type" drop-down.

The build with these changes will become available just after 4PM PST, or 1AM GMT.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.