From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2006-09-21T13:59:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Hoe 1.0 released


khaines@enigo.com wrote:

> I am actually interested in where capabilities between reap and rake+hoe
> overlap and differ, and I figured that you must have looked at reap before
> writing your own set of tools and would have some constructive thoughts on
> the differences.

>From first apperances clearly they cover many of the same needs: rdoc,
test, gem creation, uploading to Rubyforge, etc. Of course there are
some non-overlaps in functionality too and in that regard Reap has a
slight advantage. But capabilites aside. Reap is much more its own
entity. Hoe is really an extension to Rake that ties in a some other
tools as well (multiruby, rubyforge script). So Reap has one dependency
(Facets) while Hoe has many. Reap can handle odd cases as it is a
general system. Hoe is basically a used in one specific way. There are
of course trade offs to either approach. And certainly I can see Hoe
being a great little tool. After all, Hoe is basically what Reap used
to be. But while Hoe is essentially all that it will ever be (less a
few more tasks). Reap is still largely coming into it's own.Utlimately
it will be a bed rock of build scripts that can do just about any
general tak one can expect, even cross-language. In other words Reap
has a much larger vision. It's really the same inspiration behind
Facets. Offer a LOT of capability and make it as easy as possible to
use.

HTH,
T.

P.S. It's a bit ironic for this comes up now. I've just spent the last
two months taking Reap to the "next level". I had hoped to release by
now, but I think I still have a week or so to go before an initial
release is reasonable. It's looking very nice. The extra time has been
well worth it!