So I uploaded the common tools package to the web site last night–and realized that I had no version information in the jar file or the documentation files. How do you know if you have the latest thing?

Quick tweak to the build.xml file for all uploaded projects to add a build number to the jar and the javadocs, uploaded everything to the server–and all is well in the world.

What I did, by the way, was to use <propertyfile> in ant to manage a build properties file, then use the resulting properties to generate the correct manifest and copyright information. So now the copyright information contains the version number corresponding to the build number use to build the docs–which generally is the same as the build number for the jar files. (But not always; some of my code checks to make sure the jar file of other projects are up to date, which triggers a build number increment on that other project.)

The latest additions I made to the common files include code for an HTTP server framework–so I could build my proxy, a simple and stupid ‘debug’ IO Stream class which allows you to hook an OutputStream to an InputStream or OutputStream chain so you can see what’s going through the pipe, as well as a watchdog timer class which has the nice property that you can tell an object in the timer to reset itself.

Nothing earth-shattering here, and all are things you probably can find better examples of elsewhere. But what the heck; it entertains me, which is really what all this is about. Right? If someone else accidently finds all this stuff useful, then so much the better.