XML for Makefiles?

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.

4 thoughts on “XML for Makefiles?”

Jeremy Zawodny August 12, 2003 at 11:30 pm

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

Screw that. XML is for computers, NOT people.

Sam August 18, 2003 at 10:21 am

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.

Alec Noronha October 17, 2003 at 12:41 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.

Dejan Lekic January 20, 2004 at 6:46 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…

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