Peter D -- I think you need to rethink your position. While templating is
nice, and I amy even use it in the future, blocking progress of base ant
in this manner will only lead to ant becoming a boat anchor when people
stop being amazed by the javac task and start using it for building
real *systems*.
That or a fork... (which I *really* don't want to do)
Just look at how many people post to this list with problems that would
be solved by a few simple features which are repeatedly blocked by a few
select committers:
foreach
if
expansion of variables in the depends attribute
The simple fact of the matter is that the *goals* you purport to support
(simplicity, avoidance of obfuscated constructs, etc.) are laudable, but
quite frankly I'm mystified by your approach: you block the very
constructs
that would help to avoid monstrosities such as these:
<target name="a">
...
</target>
<target name="b">
...
</target>
<target name="c">
...
</target>
<target name="d">
...
</target>
<target name="doall" depends="a,b,c,d"/>
Where the ... is the same in all cases other than its use of some feature
distinguished by the target name. How much easier it could be:
<target name="doall">
<foreach var="loopvar" list="a,b,c,d">
... (using ${var})
</foreach>
</target>
Or consider the property referencing patch that is the core of the current
topic, I can *completly* abstract the common build tasks into a core of
files (property.xml and target.xml) and use them in subsystem build.xml
files (as posted previously) but I need for the local level to be able to
override or augment things done in the standard build phases. For example
target.xml has constructs like this:
<property name="dist" value="global.dist"/>
<target name="dist" value="${dist}"/>
Which allows a local file to do this before including target.xml:
<property name="dist" value="local.dist, global.dist"/>
or this if the dist target doesn't make sense in this subsystem:
<property name="dist" value="noop"/>
From my POV, your templating concepts ADD complexity for very little
value...
-Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Bodewig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 5:01 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: PATCH: Attributes of Target can reference properties
Peter Donald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So you say you are going to -1 every solution that allows users to
specify dependencies on the command line for Ant2 and offer
templates as the alternative. You'd accept such a non-templating
solution for Ant1, as long as it doesn't imply it will be present
in Ant2. Is this correct?
essentially ;)
In which case we are stuck with regard to Peter Vogel's patch, targets
will be there in Ant2 and they will have a depends attribute -
expanding properties for it in Ant1 but not for Ant2 is not an option
for me.
Stefan
