[colug-432] February COLUG Meeting Announcement

[Greg Sidelinger]

Maven really is an amazing build tool.  I'm not a Java guy but part of
my job is maintaining a Java build environment and we use maven.  We
have a top level pom which defines our standards.  As long the
developers create children of that pom and only use a predefined set
of libraries and plugins we are pretty much able to build anything
with out many issues. We can rebuild the same java applications pretty
much anywhere the correct JDK and maven installs are at.  The older
java build system was a collection of tens of thousands of lines of
ant scripts that seemed to require customization every time a new
application was brought into the mix.  With maven we can push more of
the customization to the development teams but still maintain
corporate standards.  My team is currently building around 200
different applications with it.

I also really like the continuous integration tools that seem to be
very popular with Java.  I've been working  with it over the last six
years and it's just amazing to see the things people are doing with
it. I don't pay much attention to other languages but I really hope
they are doing the same things as maven and CI do for Java.

Greg




On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Scott McCarty <scott.mccarty at gmail.com> wrote:
> Definitely the build tools!!! I understand the basics of Maven, Rake, etc, but it would be cool to see how people are really using them. With open source C code almost everybody uses automake, so the build process is (or some variation of that):
>
> ./configure
> make
> make install
>
> There are variations and also all kind of unofficial standards with things like --prefix, etc, etc. I think most of us are familiar, IMHO, with these kinds of things. It's sort of tribal knowledge, but it's fairly well known. What I would like to see is a comparison of how Java/Ruby/Python compare to the way we normally do things in C. I kinda know a lot of this stuff myself, but I think there are some black holes and gaps and I think a compare/contrast between modern open-source build tools/workflows vs. tradition would be a great service to most of us.
>
> Virtulenv is similar to RVM except virtual env can't grab the source, and compile it as I have been told that RVM can. I could imagine a presentation that has a couple of diagrams showing a couple standard C workflows compared with one for Python, one for Ruby, and one for Java. Honestly, Java is the most interesting to me because the Java world is so large and it is the one I am least familiar with. It would be completely OK to demonstrate how Java goes beyond what normal C programmers with automated builds, etc, though I believe C programmers are doing this too now.
>
> Best Regards
> Scott M
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rob Funk" <rfunk at funknet.net>
> To: "Central OH Linux User Group - 432xx" <colug-432 at colug.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 10:23:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [colug-432] February COLUG Meeting Announcement
>
> On Tuesday, February 21, 2012 09:49:06 AM Scott McCarty wrote:
>> As a final comment on code compilation, I would say I am most intrigued by
>> the Java world, where I have the least experience. I hear about all of
>> these build tools. I think it would be quite interesting to see a side by
>> side comparison of:
>>
>> C
>> Java
>> Python
>> Ruby
>
> A comparison as languages, or as programming tool environments?
>
>> Along with all of the build tools that are associated and their
>> equivalents. I am quite familiar with C build tools as I think most Unix
>> guys are (probably many on this list), but I am much less knowledgeable
>> when it comes to the Java/Python/Ruby worlds, yet there is an endless sea
>> of blog posts about RVM, VirtualEnv, Maven, Jenkins, etc.
>
> Hm, the things you list do different things.
> RVM switches between Ruby interpreters/environments. I'm not that familiar
> with the Python world but I get the impression that VirtualEnv does something
> similar there.
> Maven is sort of an uber-make, optimized for Javaland but usable beyond that.
> Jenkins is a build server, useful for running builds of projects for
> continuous integration testing or deployment; it calls other build tools
> (make, ant, maven, rake, whatever) to do the actual work.
>
>> This level of
>> "compiling open source", I believe, is extremely applicable to the modern
>> professional Linux person and I would love to see a talk expanded into
>> this are of compilation/building free software.
>
> I might be able to contribute to something like this, with my experience in C,
> Ruby, and a little Java. (Though these days I'm doing Javascript and PHP, and
> my Ruby is a few years out of date.)
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