On 1/6/01 9:40 PM, "Jason Rosenberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ant is procedural, and that is what I want. It is close to being useful,
> to date, but just needs to add a very small set of features to close the
> case. Simply admitting that it is procedural would really clear the way.
> Let's stop beating around the bush.
Nope. Let's not. There are things that Ant needs. IMHO, turning into
something procedural isn't one of them. I'd rather just write my
buildscripts in JavaScript if that were the case.
I come down to the opinion that calling something data or code is pretty
tough. After all, software is just data at some point. :) However there is a
visceral line drawn about what Ant is good for, and at what point it's not.
That line has been labeled with the somewhat, but sort of useful terms of
"procedural vs. declarative". Neither term is totally appropriate. But we
use them anyway :)
> Yes, I think the beauty of Ant is that it has the power to keep
> things simple and human readable. I like the <execute-task>
> idea mentioned by someone on another topic, or possibly a
> simple case:
>
> <case property="caseProperty">
> <if value="1" execute="doMainCompile"/>
> <if value="2" execute="doPartialBuild"/>
> <default execute="showErrorAndFaile"/>
> </case>
But here you are saying you want a "if" target implementation that could
take any set of attributes and do something. "<execute-target>" only does
just that. It's a difference. And, imho, it's a big one.
--
James Duncan Davidson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
!try; do()
