XML for Makefiles? (Michael J. Radwin's blog)

Computer Science | August 12, 2003 09:43 AM | Comments (4)

XML hasn't cured our ills or saved the world, but people keep using it for absurd purposes anyways. I finally took a quick look at Apache Ant today to see what all the fuss is about. Apparently with some additional components you can actually get Ant to build C/C++ code.

However, compare this build.xml for Ant:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="Hello" default="hello" basedir=".">
 <taskdef resource="cpptasks.tasks"/>
 <taskdef resource="cpptasks.types"/>
 <target name="hello">
  <cc name="gcc" outfile="hello">
   <fileset dir="." includes="hello.c"/>
   <compilerarg value="-O2"/>
  </cc>
 </target>
</project>

with this Makefile for gmake:

hello: hello.c
	gcc -O2 $< -o $@

I think I'll stick with gmake for now.

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Comments

It cracks me up that people expect me to hand-write XML.

Screw that. XML is for computers, NOT people.

Posted by Jeremy Zawodny at August 12, 2003 11:30 PM

Ant is best used for Java applications. I find make to be ugly and a pain for Java. Ant has some nifty stuff for creating web applications in Java.

I tried the cpp tasks for Ant for doing C++ builds and it *is* ugly and didn't work. For that I think that gmake or bjam/jam is best.

Posted by Sam at August 18, 2003 10:21 AM

If your project were predominantly in Java but needed a bit of C code thru the Java Native Interface (which would require compiling of C programs) then you would probably prefer the ant task over a makefile.

Posted by Alec Noronha at October 17, 2003 12:41 AM

I completely agree on this. However I look at Ant not as competition to MAKE, but as competition to GNU Autotools where it shines. I also agree with note about XML. People tend to put XML into absurd things. Per example using XML for any kind of database is IMHO absurd...

Posted by Dejan Lekic at January 20, 2004 06:46 AM