On Dec 13, 2000, Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> Peter Donald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > At 11:00 13/12/00 +0100, Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> >>Peter Donald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>> I see much much danger in evaluating depends attributes.
> >>
> >>If we were going to expand them at runtime that is, right. Actually
> >>I was proposing to expand them at parser time - should have been
> >>clearer.
>
> When it comes to <project>, parser time and runtime are the same. We
> need to know the basedir of a project when setting the dir attribute
> of a <fileset> for example.
>
> Evaluating the depends attribute at runtime would be a real pain as
> you could not calculate the dependency graph up front and might realize
> there is a cycle when you are half way through the build.
>
> If we evaluate them at parser time, the problem would go away, but
> that might make it less useful to those who want to expand properties
> in the depends attribute, not sure.
Evaluation at parser time would be just fine for me.
We have a bunch of stand-alone commands we create around our main
product. Not all of these commands are built/supported on all
platforms (it's native code). What I want to do is have a
targets.xml file with build rules for all targets. I then want a
master build.xml file for each platform that sets ${build.targets}
appropriately for that platform, and calls <ant> on the targets
file. The targets file main <target> then depends on
${build.targets}. This is a serious lack of functionality when
compared to make.
Without veriable expansion here, I need to duplicate quite a bit of
XML to get the functionality I want.
I agree that runtime expansion would be problematic, and should be
avoided.
Thanks
-John
----------------------------------------------------------------
John Rousseau [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SilverStream Software Phone: +1 978 262 3564
2 Federal Street Fax: +1 978 262 3499
Billerica, MA 01821 http://www.silverstream.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
