Hello:
Back in April I brought up the prospect of adding a project-wide description for buildfiles. Its a pretty obvious add, given the name of the command-line help option ("-projecthelp")!
I believe we all agreed that it would be a Good Thing. The discussion then centered on the choice of implementation, namely: attribute or element.
Adding an optional "description" attribute to the <project> tag has the following advantages:
- extremely quick and easy to implement - minimal breakage
and disadvantages:
- this attribute is likely to get very large (i.e. multi-line), more so even than the <target> description attribute.
Adding an optional "description" element has the following advantages:
- more in-line with XML philosophy (content does not belong in attributes)
- more flexible: like <property>, we could allow <description> elements to appear other places as well, such as within targets.
- more extensible: in future, we could even provide for embedded markup like stylebook, or use <![CDATA[ to embed HTML markup, etc.
and disadvantages:
-More likely to break compatibility-- the most natural way to implement is to emulate <property> and this requires changes in many more places...
I personally believe that the description element is the better way to go; however, I fully appreciate the importance of stability and backwards compatibility.
Therefore, I (somewhat regretfully) propose adding a description attribute as a temporary solution until Ant2 happens.
Let me know if I missed any important arguments for or against. Otherwise, please vote for "element" or "attribute." I promise a quick turnaround on the patch :-)
Regards,
--Craeg
--
Craeg K. Strong | www.arielpartners.com
Ariel Partners LLC | [EMAIL PROTECTED] 85 River Street, Ste. 3A | Fax: (781) 647-9690
Waltham, MA 02453 | Voice: (781) 647-2425
