Re: [nant-dev] SUBMISSION: Path Task

Ian MacLean Sun, 14 Dec 2003 06:20:25 -0800

Sounds good to me.

Ian
Jaroslaw Kowalski wrote:

Should I add Deprecated attribute to "propertyexists", "propertytrue" and
"taskexists" in EE-patches?

Jarek ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian MacLean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jaroslaw Kowalski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Gert Driesen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "William E Caputo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Nant-Developers (E-Mail)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 12:57 PM Subject: Re: [nant-dev] SUBMISSION: Path Task

+1 on the if task refactoring.  I'm not sure about removing <sysinfo>
though. I realize that a getenv() function would provide equivalent
functionality, however I like the fact that I just need to do
<sysinfo/>
and then I have access to the environment block without having to call
any more functions. Maybe I have just a fondness for the current way of
doing it. :)

Ian

Jaroslaw Kowalski wrote:

Tasks should offer functionality on a much higher level than functions

...

Here's my dream about NAnt:

1. Tasks should actually DO something. That "something" is: compile,

create,

delete, XSL transform, update from cvs, send email, run unit tests,

install,

uninstall, start/stop services, start/kill processes,

compress/decompress.

There'are actually some tasks that do nothing like that, but they direct

the

build process:
<call>
<description>
<fail>
<if>
<ifnot>
<include>
<loadtasks>
<nant>
<property>
<script>
These should be definitely kept.
2. I would consider removing any task that is neither used to direct the
build process nor noes "something" - as described above.
My candidates for removal are:
<sysinfo>
<tstamp>
<available>
3. I'm also thinking about removing:

<readregistry> (maybe not, because it can be used to read many values

at

once)
<xmlpeek> (maybe not, because it's a nice pair to <xmlpoke>)

4. I also think that <if> should be restructured to include only "test"
attribute.

<if propertytrue="aaaa" /> would become <if test="${aaaa}" />
<if propertyexists="aaaa" /> would become <if
test=${nant::property-exists('aaaa')}" />
<if targetexists="aaaa" /> would become <if
test=${nant::target-exists('aaaa')}" />

<ifnot> should be eliminated, because you can always write "not" in
expressions.

So:

<ifnot propertytrue="aaaa"/> would become <if test="${not aaaa}" />
<ifnot propertyexists="aaaa"/> would become <if test="${not
nant::property-exists('aaaa')}" />
<ifnot targetexists="aaaa"/> would become <if test="${not
nant::target-exists('aaaa')}" />

5. There's a problem with "uptodatefile", but I think this should go into
another task or a function. Like:

<check-up-to-date property="">
      <target-files>
          <includes name="..." />
      </target-files>
      <source-files>
          <includes name="..." />
      </source-files>
</check-up-to-date>

A function that would be useful for single-file to single-file

comparison:

<if test="${file::is-newer-than('file1','file2')}" />
6. With these changes we'd have an <if> task that would be clean and we'd
get rid of <sysinfo>, <tstamp>, <available>
7. All above syntax changes could be done automatically with the help of

a

simple XSLT file that would rewrite buildfiles.

Jarek

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Ian MacLean, Developer,
ActiveState, a division of Sophos
http://www.ActiveState.com

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Re: [nant-dev] SUBMISSION: Path Task

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