An XML parser is not required to transmit XML comments to the document/content handler (SAX) or place it into the document tree (DOM), so this wouldn't be truly reliable, but XSLT does let you match on comments:
<xsl:template match="comment()">...</xsl:template>
Perhaps a <? processing instruction ?> would be better suited? (Assuming Ant ignores them right now.) You can match on those in XSLT as well, and the XML parser must transmit them upstream:
<xsl:template match="processing-instruction()">...</xsl:template>
Adding a <doc> tag that is simply ignored by Ant might be more convenient. The description attribute is useful, especially in light of -projecthelp, but allowing html/xml markup ala JavaDoc comments would be convenient.
- Rod Waldhoff <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Britannica.com <http://britannica.com/>
PS: I really like the idea of using XSLT to generate this documentation, since it would give the documentation-generating-engine access to the actual build.xml source.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Todd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 3:48 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: documenting your build file
Hmmm, this is an interesting idea. I suppose the easiest way to do this
would be to create a new Ant Task that interprets a tag like <doc> or
<builddoc> and have the contents of that tag formatted into HTML or whatever
format you want.
Alternatively, if Ant will tolerate having tags in build.xml that it doesn't
know about (my guess is it would not - is that correct?), then you could
include <doc> tags in your build.xml, then simply transform build.xml into
HTML (or whatever) using an XSL stylesheet. Actually, can an XSL stylesheet
recognize XML comments <!-- --> and transform them (sorry, I left my XML/XSL
book at work)? If so, then you could just comment your build.xml normally
and transform it with such a stylesheet.
Sincerest regards,
Chris Todd
Software Engineer
Alabanza Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Julian M. Savage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 4:16 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: documenting your build file
Is there a way that I can easily generate documentation from my build file
for developers who use it? Basically what I want is javadoc like
functionality of some sort. Is there an easy way to do this somehow?
Thanks,
Julian.
