Usage of Gradle ()

Russel Winder | 1 Jun 2010 10:11

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 08:57 +0200, Peter Maas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we are reconsidering buildtools (currently using Buildr) and I'd
> really like to pitch Gradle once more. I wondered if someone would
> happen to have a deck of slides which  introduces people to gradle
> which I could use at one of our tech sessions; preferably with some
> stuff about the DAG in it as well....
> 
I don't have any slides I can let you have I'm afraid but two thoughts:

1.  I would be very interested to know the reason why Buildr is seen as
a system to move away from (*).

2.  Are you sure a slides based presentation is the thing to do.  If you
feel up to it, doing live demonstrations as a way of introducing tools
such as Gradle usually works very much better.

(*)  Interesting to speculate:  Ivy becomes an Apache project and
rapidly declines, Buildr becomes an Apache project, and people start
choosing other systems . . .   

--

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder <at> ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@...
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

headers

Peter Maas | 1 Jun 2010 11:23

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

Very valid remarks. Some of the 'issues' we have with Buildr are:

* keeping a sane ruby environment next to a java environment proves to be quite a bit of work (we are 2 teams of 6 devs)
* incremental compiles don't really work resources are not taken into account
* integration with maven style repostories is not optimal (no dependencies in pom etc.)
* dependency graph between projects is very shallow for our needs, quite some string filtering going on now
* no dependency scopes apart from test and compile
* many plugins only work in certain conditions; where find ourselves modifying core components to actually get stuff like code coverage and javadoc to exactly do what we want it to do

Still, don't get me wrong... we really like how easy it is to drop to operating system level stuff from ruby ;)

And yes, I agree a live demo should be part of the presentation. But especially under-the-hood stuff like the way incremental compiles are calculated from the DAG and how tests are being paralellized is something far easier to explain with some slides backing it ;)

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Russel Winder <russel <at> russel.org.uk> wrote:

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 08:57 +0200, Peter Maas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> we are reconsidering buildtools (currently using Buildr) and I'd
> really like to pitch Gradle once more. I wondered if someone would
> happen to have a deck of slides which introduces people to gradle
> which I could use at one of our tech sessions; preferably with some
> stuff about the DAG in it as well....
>

I don't have any slides I can let you have I'm afraid but two thoughts:

1. I would be very interested to know the reason why Buildr is seen as
a system to move away from (*).

2. Are you sure a slides based presentation is the thing to do. If you
feel up to it, doing live demonstrations as a way of introducing tools
such as Gradle usually works very much better.

(*) Interesting to speculate: Ivy becomes an Apache project and
rapidly declines, Buildr becomes an Apache project, and people start
choosing other systems . . .

--
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.winder-gabAEHCsIuteoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org
41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: russel-Q5fiE77zhxfe9xe1eoZjHA@public.gmane.org
London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder

headers

Russel Winder | 1 Jun 2010 11:52

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 11:23 +0200, Peter Maas wrote:

> * keeping a sane ruby environment next to a java environment proves to
> be quite a bit of work (we are 2 teams of 6 devs)
> * incremental compiles don't really work resources are not taken into
> account
> * integration with maven style repostories is not optimal (no
> dependencies in pom etc.)
> * dependency graph between projects is very shallow for our needs,
> quite some string filtering going on now
> * no dependency scopes apart from test and compile
> * many plugins only work in certain conditions; where find ourselves
> modifying core components to actually get stuff like code coverage and
> javadoc to exactly do what we want it to do
> 
> Still, don't get me wrong... we really like how easy it is to drop to
> operating system level stuff from ruby ;)

Thanks for that, very helpful.
> 
> And yes, I agree a live demo should be part of the presentation. But
> especially under-the-hood stuff like the way incremental compiles are
> calculated from the DAG and how tests are being paralellized is
> something far easier to explain with some slides backing it ;)
> 
For a first presentation, you almost certainly don't want to get
involved in deep internals, but instead just skate over the points
raising flags for any further debates.  The danger here is
"bikeshedding".  If you offer an audience details, opponents of your
proposal will pick up on the smallest (but most comprehensible) issue
and turn it into the single point on which your proposal stands or
falls.  Not good.  Classic example:  Bazaar vs. Mercurial vs. Git.  For
technical reasons certain log commands can be slow in Bazaar.  So you
see the argument.  This log command is slow in Bazaar so therefore
Bazaar is not usable therefore we choose Git because it is the fastest.
Independent or not of whether Git is a good choice, if the discussion
proceeds in this fashion then sanity is lost.

--

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder <at> ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@...
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

headers

Tomek Kaczanowski | 1 Jun 2010 12:05

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

> And yes, I agree a live demo should be part of the presentation. But
> especially under-the-hood stuff like the way incremental compiles are
> calculated from the DAG and how tests are being paralellized is something
> far easier to explain with some slides backing it ;)
Not sure why would you like to explain the details. From my
experience, once you show a multi-module build and present what can be
done with buildNeeded & co, the audience is all yours. :)

--
Regards / Pozdrawiam
Tomek Kaczanowski

headers

Peter Maas | 1 Jun 2010 12:48

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Tomek Kaczanowski <kaczanowski.tomek-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> And yes, I agree a live demo should be part of the presentation. But
> especially under-the-hood stuff like the way incremental compiles are
> calculated from the DAG and how tests are being paralellized is something
> far easier to explain with some slides backing it ;)

Not sure why would you like to explain the details. From my
experience, once you show a multi-module build and present what can be
done with buildNeeded & co, the audience is all yours. :)

You have to factor the fact that we are doing a multimodule build with Buildr now as well; superficially Buildr and Gradle look very similar... that is where the details become important.

--
Regards / Pozdrawiam
Tomek Kaczanowski

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:

http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email

headers

Rene Groeschke | 1 Jun 2010 19:40

Re: looking for a slide deck for internal presentation

Hi,

I introduced gradle to our team without a slide deck and just created a 
wiki site with the facts to know about gradle (and artifactory) and 
switched very fast to a live demo. To be sure everyting works well I 
often cheat and show a Screencast I had recoreded before.  (I recommend 
screenflow). This approach works well i think.

regards,
René

Am 01.06.10 10:11, schrieb Russel Winder:
> On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 08:57 +0200, Peter Maas wrote:
>    
>> Hi,
>>
>> we are reconsidering buildtools (currently using Buildr) and I'd
>> really like to pitch Gradle once more. I wondered if someone would
>> happen to have a deck of slides which  introduces people to gradle
>> which I could use at one of our tech sessions; preferably with some
>> stuff about the DAG in it as well....
>>
>>      
> I don't have any slides I can let you have I'm afraid but two thoughts:
>
> 1.  I would be very interested to know the reason why Buildr is seen as
> a system to move away from (*).
>
> 2.  Are you sure a slides based presentation is the thing to do.  If you
> feel up to it, doing live demonstrations as a way of introducing tools
> such as Gradle usually works very much better.
>
> (*)  Interesting to speculate:  Ivy becomes an Apache project and
> rapidly declines, Buildr becomes an Apache project, and people start
> choosing other systems . . .
>
>    

--

-- 
------------------------------------
Rene Groeschke

rene@...
http://www.breskeby.com
http://twitter.com/breskeby
------------------------------------