The A-A-P project offers awards

[Bram Moolenaar]

Aap version 1.0 has been released.  The next version should be even more
powerful, faster, reliable and simpler to use.  If you help making this
possible you will not only receive appreciation from Aap users, but have
a chance to make money as well!


AWARDS

444 euro for the best contribution to the A-A-P project
222 euro for the most useful patch for Aap or Agide
111 euro for the brightest idea for the A-A-P project


THE RULES

- The "best contribution" can be anything that helps the progress of the
   A-A-P project or improves the usability of Aap and/or Agide.
- The "most useful patch" can be for fixing a long standing bug, adding
   support for a specific compiler, a port to another system, etc.
- The "brightest idea" is a suggestion for a useful addition to the
   A-A-P project or for improving Aap or Agide without the need for an
   actual implementation.
- Contributions are to be sent to the A-A-P-develop maillist.  No
   specific format is required.  Everybody contributing to A-A-P
   automatically becomes a potential award winner.
- You may submit as many times as you like. All contributions must go
   under the GNU GPL.
- The closing date is September 30, 2003.  The winners will be announced
   on the A-A-P web site in October 2003.
- The selection of the award winners will be done by Bram Moolenaar, the
   A-A-P project leader.
- The money is provided by the NLnet foundation.


A-A-P AT THE O'REILLY CONFERENCE

Bram Moolenaar will do a presentation on Aap on July 10 at the O'Reilly
Open Source Convention in Portland.  See:
	http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2003/view/e_sess/4026
There is also a BOF session about the A-A-P project:
	http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2003/view/e_sess/4348
You are welcome to join a discussion about the future of Aap.


WHAT IS AAP?

The Aap program is make on steroids. It does everything that other build
systems do, has a powerful script language build-in and has integrated
internet support.  You can use it to:

- Build a program, on multiple platforms and in several variants
- Download a file the moment it is needed
- Maintain a web site (Aap is used for the Vim web site)
- Download and install an application (like FreeBSD ports)
- Obtain a module from CVS, update files in CVS
- Generate and filter files
- And much more

Most of these things can be done with an Aap recipe of just a few lines.
Have a look at the examples: http://www.a-a-p.org/examples.html.

The Aap recipe works better than a Makefile in many ways:

- Uses signatures to avoid trouble with timestamps; restoring an old
   version of a source file causes recompiling
- Integrated support for up- and downloading
- Integrated support for CVS (other version control systems can be added)
- Python script can be used for more complicated tasks
- Reduces the need for shell scripts, improves portability
- Messages are brief, a log file contains the details
- Automatically figures out dependencies for C programs
- Simple syntax: mostly like a Makefile but avoids the need for line
   continuation backslashes, spaces in a file name are possible
- Good support for a project with multiple directories

Aap is written in Python. It runs on any Unix, MS-Windows and Mac OS X
system with Python 1.5 or later,


WHAT IS THE A-A-P PROJECT?

A-A-P makes it easy to locate, download, build and install software. It
also supports browsing source code, developing programs, managing
different versions and distribution of software and documentation. This
means that A-A-P is useful both for users and for developers.

A-A-P currently consists of the Aap program and Agide, the A-A-P GUI
IDE.  Agide makes it possible for existing tools to work together. For
example: to use Vim with gdb for debugging, lookup remote documentation
with the cross referencer, preview a TeX file, etc.

Aap is now stable.  Agide is still in the development phase.

A-A-P is open source under the GNU GPL.


LINKS

Home page: http://www.a-a-p.org
Manual HTML: http://www.a-a-p.org/exec/index.html
Manual PDF: http://www.a-a-p.org/exec/exec.pdf
Maillists: http://www.a-a-p.org/maillist.html
Freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/a-a-p/

-- 
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  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@Moolenaar.net -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///          Creator of Vim - Vi IMproved -- http://www.Vim.org          \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\  Help AIDS victims, buy here: http://ICCF-Holland.org/click1.html  ///