Roger Vaughn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To my way of thinking, the discussion should not center around > whether templates (dynamic or static) are "the right thing to do", > but rather around how they impact, positively or negatively, the Ant > core and therefore the structure and behavior of *all* Ant scripts.
I agree - and I think Peter does as well. The thread started out with Peter asking which combination of tools he should use to create his prototype - so we can evaluate the impact - and somewhere down the thread I said I wouldn't care too much ... We all agree that Ant should work with its Object model and that parsing XML files should be just one way to create that model. I view Peter's "Configure->Template->Build" system as another approach to create this object model. What I'm more or less fighting against ATM is that we make any such other system an integral part of Ant itself - and I don't think Peter disagrees with me here either. Most of the problems people have with Ant - at least those people asking for loops and such - stem from the fact that they are trying to make Ant fit the paradigm they've been using in their respective build systems before they switched to Ant IMHO. My major concern here is: Give them static templates and they don't even bother looking up another way of doing what they need with Ant. They'll talk about the complexity of XSLT and say Ant would be difficult to learn and all that. If we have some static templating mechanism I strongly wish that we brand it as "this is not Ant". > There is obviously demand (and therefore need) for this type of > functionality, so who are we to say it is "wrong"? Which functionality exactly? Stefan
