293ceaee93
* Initial check-in of Pants, a new utility to help us manage our 3rd-party
dependencies (Fortuna, Jetty, Java Service Wrapper, etc.). Some parts of
Pants are still non-functional at this time so don't mess with it yet
unless you want to potentially mangle your working copy of CVS.
117 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
117 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
What is Pants?
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--------------
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Pants is an Apache Ant-based package manager for the management of 3rd party
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dependencies in Java development projects. It's loosely modeled after
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FreeBSD's Ports and Gentoo Linux's Portage, with two major differences:
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* Pants isn't intended for system-wide package management. It's tailored for
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per-project 3rd party package management. You will typically have one
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Pants repository per project and each repository will be located somewhere
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under your project's root directory. If you're familiar with Ports or
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Portage, a Pants repository is roughly analogous to /usr/ports or
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/usr/portage.
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* Pants is extremely portable. It goes anywhere Apache Ant goes.
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Pants takes a modular approach to the standard Ant buildfile, breaking it
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into 3 files for functionality and convenience:
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1. The Pants public interface, pants/build.xml, provides a single consistent
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way to access and manipulate dependency packages and relieves some of the
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developer's burden by providing implementations for some frequently-used
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and complex Ant operations.
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2. pbuild.xml is a specially-structured and slimmed-down Ant buildfile in
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which you implement custom handling for a package your project depends
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on. This is known as the "pbuild" and is roughly analogous to a FreeBSD
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port or a Gentoo ebuild. A fairly explanatory template for pbuilds,
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pbuild.template.xml, is provided.
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3. pbuild.properties contains those properties for a specific pbuild which
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are most likely to change over time. It uses the java.util.Properties
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format which is more human-friendly for hand-editing than Ant/XML. A
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fairly explanatory template, pbuild.template.properties, is provided.
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There is one more file that completes the Pants system: the metadata file
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pants/world is a database for keeping track of all packages managed by Pants
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for your project.
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Pants automatically handles versioning for your project's dependency
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packages and keeps track of their recommended versions, currently used
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versions, and latest available versions. This makes it extremely simple for
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project developers to switch back and forth between different versions of a
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dependency, and makes it just as easy to update a dependency. You can even
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update all your project's Pants-managed packages with a single command.
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Pbuilds are designed to automatically handle the downloading, building,
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repackaging and deployment of source archives, binary archives, and CVS
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sources, all in a manner that's completely transparent to the project
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developer. Pbuilds currently support tar + gzip, tar + bzip2, and zip
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archives.
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Because it is based on Ant, Pants integrates very well with Ant buildfiles
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and will fit easily into your project's Ant build framework. However, its
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interface is simple enough to be called just as easily by more traditional
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build systems such as GNU Make.
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Why Should I Use Pants?
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-----------------------
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There are many applications for Pants, but a few use cases should best serve
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to illustrate its usefulness:
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1. You have a project that you ship with several 3rd party libraries but the
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versions you're using are stale. With a single command, Pants can
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automatically discover the latest release versions for all of these, then
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download, build, and place the fresh libraries where your project's main
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build system expects them to be at build time.
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2. You want to test multiple versions of a 3rd party library against your
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project. Pants only requires you to issue a single command to switch
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library versions, so can spend more time testing and less time hunting
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packages down, unpackaging them, symlinking, etc.
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3. Pants is public domain. You can ship it with your project if you need to
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without having to worry about petty intellectual property or licensing
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issues.
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Minimum Requirements
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--------------------
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* Apache Ant 1.6.2 or higher is recommended
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* Any Java runtime and operating system that will run Ant
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Installation
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------------
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Not finished yet.
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Why the Silly Name?
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-------------------
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Ports + Ant = Pants. Any other explanation is purely a product of your
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twisted imagination.
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Miscellaneous Pocket Fluff
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--------------------------
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Author: smeghead <smeghead@i2pmail.org> <smeghead@mail.i2p>
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License: No license necessary. This work is released into the public domain.
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Price: Free! But if you really appreciate Pants, or you're just a sicko,
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please send me a picture of your worst or most unusual pair of
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pants so I can add it to the Whirling Hall of Pants on pants.i2p,
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the official Pants eepsite (that's an anonymous website on I2P--see
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http://www.i2p.net for more information).
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$Id$
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