Just an interesting aside, brought on by the "backward compatibility issue"...
Is the code correct based on purely in it's own context, or is it correct based on what users expect? If the latter, is this based on current active users who realize there is a bug, or based on users who don't realize there is a bug and just expect it to keep working the same way? And now back to your regularly scheduled thread... Here's an idea: The .NET Framework team is trying really hard to solve the issues of versioning and not breaking backward compatibility. Although there are still many issues to be solved, they have created solutions for some. I'm wondering if we can take a page from their play book. In this particular case, it might be time to start putting version stamps in the project file header so that Nant will know how to behave. Just like the way the .NET Framework side-by-side assemblies are suppose to work where you can configure an application to pick a particular version of an assembly, it might be a good idea to do something similar to Nant. I'm thinking that when Nant starts up, it checks its config file for a "preferred version". Later when it reads a project file, and if it discovers a "preferred version" attribute on the project, Nant will take on the behavior of the version of Nant at that time. If there is no preferred version, the latest and greatest version behavior is used. (This is similar to how DirectX and TAPI work. When you initialize these API engines, you pass in the version that you wrote the code in. The idea is that the engines will behave as they did for that particular version.) This way people who were depending on the broken behavior of "if uptodatefile" can still continue working simply by tweaking either the Nant config file or particular build files. The downside of this will be the need for greater coordination among open source developers about bumping the version number for the schema/interface/whatchamacallit when behavior changes due to a new feature, or bug fix. The bar for the documentation will also have to go up since now the behavior for each version needs to documented. The complexity of Nant goes up a little bit more making dev ramp up time a little longer. The downside may far outweight the potential benefit and we just say "Screw it. Nant is a tool for developers. Developers are smart. Developers will figure it out, eventually ... if they RTFM ... and read the source code ... and look at the code history on CVS ... ask questions on Nant-users ... and ask questions on Nant-dev ..." :-) [Side thought: Potentially, the versioning can be applied at the task level so that the version number doesn't grow out of control. I don't know if users will be thinking of "I'm using 1.5 of csc, but 1.1 of link." or "I'm using Nant version 1.3.". Probably the latter.] - Ants | -----Original Message----- | From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On | Behalf Of Gert Driesen | Sent: Friday, 22 August, 2003 07:35 | To: Jasper Keuper; [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: Re: [nant-dev] NUnit2Task Default Formatter | | | Hi Jasper, | | I'm not sure if this is the correct fix for this issue ... | | I'd rather remove the default formatter altogether, but that | would break backward compatibility. But if we can correct | wrong behaviour, we should do it as soon as possible ... | | Ian, what do you think ? | | Gert | | ----- Original Message ----- | From: "Jasper Keuper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 5:44 PM | Subject: [nant-dev] NUnit2Task Default Formatter | | | Hi, | | when working with NUnit2Task I saw that the output of the | test always showed up twice when specifying a formatter. | | This is caused by always adding a defaultFormatter, even | when there are formatters specified. | | Added: if (_formatterElements.Count == 0) | | The patch is copied below, also attached as NUnit2Task.patch | | Jasper. | | | ----- | Index: src/NAnt.NUnit/NUnit2/NUnit2Task.cs | =================================================================== | RCS file: /cvsroot/nant/nant/src/NAnt.NUnit/NUnit2/NUnit2Task.cs,v | retrieving revision 1.19 | diff -u -r1.19 NUnit2Task.cs | --- src/NAnt.NUnit/NUnit2/NUnit2Task.cs 25 May 2003 08:20:26 | -0000 1.19 | +++ src/NAnt.NUnit/NUnit2/NUnit2Task.cs 19 Aug 2003 15:30:11 -0000 | @@ -124,11 +124,13 @@ | /// </summary> | /// <param name="taskNode"><see cref="XmlNode" /> | containing the XML fragment used to initialize this task | instance.</param> | protected override void InitializeTask(XmlNode taskNode) { | - FormatterElement defaultFormatter = new | FormatterElement(); | - defaultFormatter.Project = Project; | - defaultFormatter.Type = FormatterType.Plain; | - defaultFormatter.UseFile = false; | - _formatterElements.Add(defaultFormatter); | + if (_formatterElements.Count == 0) { | + FormatterElement defaultFormatter = new | FormatterElement(); | + defaultFormatter.Project = Project; | + defaultFormatter.Type = FormatterType.Plain; | + defaultFormatter.UseFile = false; | + _formatterElements.Add(defaultFormatter); | + } | } | | /// <summary> | @@ -340,4 +342,4 @@ | #endregion Private Instance Fields | } | } | -} | \ No newline at end of file | +} | | | | ------------------------------------------------------- | This SF.net email is sponsored by: VM Ware | With VMware you can run multiple operating systems on a | single machine. WITHOUT REBOOTING! Mix Linux / Windows / | Novell virtual machines at the same time. Free trial click | here:http://www.vmware.com/wl/offer/358/0 | _______________________________________________ | nant-developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] | https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-developers | ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: VM Ware With VMware you can run multiple operating systems on a single machine. WITHOUT REBOOTING! Mix Linux / Windows / Novell virtual machines at the same time. Free trial click here:http://www.vmware.com/wl/offer/358/0 _______________________________________________ nant-developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-developers
