Tim Dawson wrote:
comiitters don't like notion of "magic" names for tasks.
... and I would have been one of them! Keeping things clear and straightforward should be the defualt, and "magic" names certainly wouldn't provide that. This is also why I don't like the ability to put things other than targets directly under project -- its not clear at all which tasks are allowed at the top level, and which aren't... until you try.
But I don't think allowing an init target has anything to do with "magic" names... If the project element allowed an "init" attribute, then the target name wouldn't be magic; at least no more than the default target is.
e.g.
<project name="foo" init="startup" default="all">
<target name="startup"> <!-- no new magic here... --> </target>
<target name="all"> <!-- no current magic here... --> </target>
</project>
Tim
This is better than the original approach that a target named "init" was special. However, it still leaves some open questions
What if I write
<target name="startup" depends="all">
Will "all" be run first or will "startup" or will it fail as a circular dependency? An alternative would be to create an <init> element which functions like a target but which has no depends list. What I originally objected to was behaviour tied to special names. If the behaviour comes from the structure, it isn't really a problem for me, although it could be argued that it makes dependency definition less explicit.
Conor
