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ant

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  <properties>
    <author email="conor@cortexebusiness.com.au">Conor MacNeill</author>
    <title>Ant News</title>
  </properties>

<body>

  <section name="Ant 2.0 Requirements">
    <p>Ant has been in use for quite some time and has been used in ways never conceived when it
       was originally written. While Ant 1.x has continued to sucessfully evolve and grow, there 
       are a number of limitations and inconsistencies that are now apparent and which need to 
       be addressed. 
    </p>
    
    <p>
       As we continue to evolve and enhance Ant 1.x, it is now time to define what Ant 2.0 will
       encompass. Ant 2.0 will be a major rearchitecting of Ant. It has a number of goals including:
       <ul>
         <li>Define the "contract" with build file writers to which Ant will be bound.</li>
         <li>Define the "contract" between the Ant core and Task writers.</li>
         <li>Make Ant more easily extendable by allowing additional tasks to be "dropped" in.</li>
         <li>Allow Ant to function as a component to simplify integration with GUIs and IDEs.</li>
         <li>Make Ant more regular and logical.</li>
       </ul>
       
       It is expected that Ant 2.0 will break Ant 1.x based build files. The intention is to
       make this the last time that will happen.
     </p>
     
     <p>
        To advance the definition of Ant, user requirements are now being accepted on the 
        Ant-Dev mailing list. Any requirement will be accepted for consideration. The 
        requirements are being collected into a document which is available 
        <a href="/ant/ant2/requested-features.txt">on-line</a>. New features will be excepted 
        until March 21st, 2001. At that time, each requirement will be discussed 
        for inclusion in an Ant 2.0 requirement document.
      </p>
      
      <p>
        For your reference some of the goals which have shaped the development of Ant 1.x are
        available <a href="/ant/ant2/original-specification.html">here</a>. These continue to be
        relevant to Ant 2.0.
      </p>
      
      <p>
        If you want to shape the future of Ant, join the 
        <a href="/site/mail.html">Ant-Dev mailing list</a> and contribute
        your ideas.
      </p>
  </section>

  <section name="Ant 1.3 Released">

    <p>
    Ant 1.3 has been released after going through three betas. Thanks to everyone who
    took the time to test the beta and report bugs and enhancements.
    </p>
    
    <p>You can download the release from 
        <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-ant/release/v1.3/">here</a>. 
       Both source and binary releases are available in zip, tarball and RPM formats.
    </p>
    <p>Please report all bugs using the 
        <a href="http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Ant">Apache Bugzilla</a>
    </p>

  </section>

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