From: "Conor MacNeill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Jeff,
>
> > Yes, that is the whole class. So, I'm thinking - it is so simple that
> > I must be missing something.
>
> What you are missing is the fact that build files are platform independent.
> If I take a build file with a unix-style colon separated path, it should
> continue to work on a Window's system. The converse is also true. Your
> change would completely break that if I understand it correctly. In other
> words, not only is the code platform independent but so is the treatment of
> the data.
>
I agree and disagree, here.
The current implementation is not only OS dependent, but it restricts the kind
of file names that
can be used on each OS system. A king of least common denominator.
True, buildfiles should be OS independent as long as they do not use OS
dependent syntax or things.
For example, a buildfile that uses <exec executable="foo.exe" .../>
will most probably not work on UNIX OSes. To certain extend the same
applies for paths. If you define paths using the concatenation of
the locations using ";" or ":" ("xyz.jar;abc/www") then you are writing OS
dependent buildfiles.
People should use:
<path id="mypath" >
<pathelement location="xyz.jar" />
<pathelement location="abc/www" />
</path>
The usage of <pathelement path="${thepath}" /> should be limited to
refer to properties whose values come from the operating system, like
java.class.path
or when the value is computed by ANT itself, like when passing arguments in
<ant>:
<ant .....>
<property name="path" refid="mypath" />
</ant>
Here ANT will set the property to the toString() value of the path reference
using
the correct representation for the OS being executed.
Jose Alberto
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