Picking up this thread which got dropped after the atrocity... > hmm true. I guess I can't see where fail tasks would not > require if/unless. Is there any (supported) use case where > this is so? I just went to use it for the first time today > and found it somewhat cumbersome. Not cumbersome because > of lacking features in ant but because the task is not useful > as a standalone task but has to be munged into an ugly target > construct.
Now you see my pain! :-) I wholeheartedly agree. I'm generally not in favor of proposals that turn Ant into a scripting language, but I have to agree that <fail> as it is today, is VERY cumbersome. I sent out a number of notes requesting if/unless this several months ago, and got shouted down as being pro-scripting. Well, I had also asked for if/unless for the "echo" task, so I suppose I was at least partially guilty. :-) I'm glad that others have also discovered that <fail>, on its own, is very ugly and cumbersome becuase and every single time its used (at least every single time I've ever used it) you have to wrap it in an ugly extra-target construct. This isn't simply a matter of a shortcut or a convenience, it is a MAJOR usability issue - the extra targets make build file maintainence much harder. I'm not a committer, but I'd really like to see this brought up again for a vote. Hard and fast rules are very rarely a substitute for good judgement, and I would think that this is a case that screams out for an exception. Thanks, Tim PS: I was glad to see that in 1.4, the <fail> task had been extended to allow a body in addition to the message attribute. That was one of the things I had asked for along with the if/unless > -----Original Message----- > From: Peter Donald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 10:03 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: if/unless on fail?? > > > On Tue, 11 Sep 2001 22:36, Glenn McAllister wrote: > > > On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Peter Donald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Couldn't spot the reason - can anyone enlighten me? > > > > > > "All tasks or no task" and "all tasks" has been rejected IIRC. > > ahh - yes - that sounds right ;) > > > That was pretty much my position. I agreed with the person who > > was pushing for if/unless on fail that it would make life a lot > > easier in the case of wanting to kill the build early if a > > particular resource was missing. My concern, however, was > > opening up that slippery slope, so my -1. > > hmm true. I guess I can't see where fail tasks would not > require if/unless. > Is there any (supported) use case where this is so? I just > went to use it for > the first time today and found it somewhat cumbersome. Not > cumbersome because > of lacking features in ant but because the task is not useful > as a standalone > task but has to be munged into an ugly target construct. > > > That being said, I'm willing to conceed that if we get a > > concensus vote on changing fail to have if/unless, I'll go along > > with it. Its an unusual enough situation that an exception can > > be justified, and seeing as we "thought police" are vigorously on > > the prowl, it shouldn't go any further. :-) > > ;) > > -- > Cheers, > > Pete > > ------------------------------------------ > I just hate 'yes' men, don't you Smithers? > ------------------------------------------ >
