I really like the worklist idea. That would allow me to specify some
patterns at the top of the file and reuse them all the way down, sort of
like a CSS for build.xml sort of thing. That way, if I want to compile a
complicated set of sources, and then javadoc, archive, and email them, I
don't need to specify the pattern 4 times.
Being a new guy coming to Ant, however, I wonder why nesting of tags
is not used mroe to help organize these issues. Why not have a tag like
<worklist> which can have a sequential set of sub-tasks inside it, that
execute on that same set of files? That way Exec could always execute within
a known context, and build.xml writers could have the freedom to choose
MatchingTask functionality or not; exec wouldn't care. Comments?
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Dimock [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 8:30 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Possible Exec and MatchingTask Refactorings
At 11:34 AM 06/27/2000 +0200, Stefan wrote:
>* There are at least three ways I could understand a file list provided
>to a plain exec task:
>
>(1) Run the command on each of the files - once per file - and always
>add the filename to the command line (probably as the last argument).
>
>(2) Run the command on all of the files at once - add all filenames as
>arguments to the command line (probably as the last arguments).
>
>(3) Run the filenames as the command to execute.
Going in a slightly different direction with this, how about a <worklist>
task which creates a named list of files? <worklist> would be a
MatchingTask, saving the generated list of files under a name wich could be
referenced similar to a property. Then your three ways become:
(1) <worklist name="myFiles" dir=... includes=... />
<exec command="whatever" dir="${myFiles}" />
(2) <worklist name="myFiles" dir=... includes=... />
<exec command="whatever ${myFiles}" dir="." />
(3) <worklist name="myCmds" dir=... includes=... />
<exec command="${myCmds}" dir="." />
This could then even take your 54 test cases example and run each of them
on you 20 sets of test data:
(4) <worklist name="myCmds" dir=... includes=... />
<worklist name="myFiles" dir=... includes=... />
<exec command="${myCmds}" dir="${myFiles}" />
Of course this is pretty seriously mangling the syntax as shown, but there
has been talk of redoing the ${} syntax anyways....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Dimock ---- Cornell University ---- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader." M. Gandhi
