WANT - A Pascal-Friendly Build Tool News

WANT 2.0.4 ALPHA (development) was released today. This release marks the first time that WANT 2.0 can build and package itself.

Note that this is still an ALPHA release, with all related caveats and disclaimers. Use at your own risk.

An updated version of the WANTScript Tutorial was posted to the Sandbox at http://want-tool.org/sandbox/Tutorial.pdf. Please, note that the Tutorial describes some new features implemented in version 2.0.4 which will be released shortly.

Andrew

WANT 2.0.3 ALPHA (development) was released today. See http://want-tool.org for download information. This release fixes a number of bugs in the IDE and the command-line WANT and extends the scripting language (WANTScript) with several new capabilities, including the support for List objects.

Notable in this release is the availability of the WANT 2.0 source code - made available to the general public for the first time.... read more

http://want-tool.org/sandbox/

This ALPHA (development) release is a binary-only package containing WANT.EXE (the command-line interpreter), WIDE.EXE (GUI IDE), a number of
WANTScript samples in the Scripts folder, and a draft version of the WANTScript tutorial.

WIDE, the WANT 2.0 IDE, features a syntax highlighting editor with powerful editing tools, WANTScript compiler and Runtime Engine.

-Andrew Wozniewicz

An alpha preview of WIDE, the WANT 2.0 IDE, will be released at the next available opportunity, which should be within the next few days, rather than weeks or months...

The IDE features a syntax-highlighting editor, and the ability to compile and run WANTScript modules from within the environment. It also allows one to analyze what happens "under-the-hood" by making it possible to view the internal syntax tree in the form of XML.... read more

I finally found some time to work on WANT again and here is the initial result. I just posted WANTScript.zip containing WANT.exe and a handful of WANTScript test samples (*.want) to the Sandox at http://www.want-tool.org/sandbox.

The sample files should give one a reasonable understanding of what WANTScript (the language) is all about. I'll just say that it is a much simplified incarnation of my toy-project, Modula-7. ... read more

Here are the goals of my WANT-refurbishing project.

1. I WANT the full power of a programming language behind WANTScript. This
   means, at the very minimum, support for loops, conditionals, and
   subroutines. This is currently completely lacking.

2. I WANT to decrease WANT's reliance on declarative mode of programming, in
   favor of plain old procedural mode. I am a Pascal programmer, with a
   passionate dislike of functional languages and style of programming , even
   though I recognize their power. As such, I don't WANT to have to switch to
   another mode of thinking when writing and maintaining build scripts. WANT is
   a tool that should not stand in my way.... read more

I have been very busy lately (like for the last year-and-a-half) with
completely non-related, work- and personal stuff, but I want you all to
know that WANT is very much on my mind these days. Here is what is
happening with it.

I must admit that I finally got tired of editing XML. It's a wonderful way
of transmitting structured information, and it works remarkably well as a
human-readable medium, but in the end, it is too cumbersome to use as a
scripting language. Part of the original attraction of XML was that it is
"standard" and relatively easy to parse, but the size and sophistication
of the scripts that I have to deal with is increasing, and I am starting
to feel like I should be programming in something approaching a civilized
programming language, not assembling XML nodes. As much as the idea of
executable XML is appealing, I think my scripts have outgrown it.... read more

You may have noticed that the project has a new Project Manager - yours truly - who, kicking and screaming and against his better judgement, let Juanca drag him over here to perform these duties. In case you were wondering, my primary reason to accept these responsibilities was that I actually use both Delphi and this tool on a regular basis, and that I started tweaking it the very first day I ran into it because I thought it sucked... I should have known that it would get me in trouble. So, here I am, intent on continuing the tweaking, except in a fully sanctioned role of the benevolent dictator, I mean Project Manager. Don't expect this project to shoot to the top of SourceForge ratings (it's a build tool, for goodness sake!), but do expect it to be kept alive. I will start working on a new release, in which I expect to incorporate my own tweaks, as well as the many good suggestions proposed by others. So, if you were holding back so far, now would be a good time to submit your code and ideas that would improve WANT. The best place to do so would be at http://news.optimax.com/WANT. See you there!... read more