I've been on the road the last week and was just browsing some of the "What's going on with Ant 1.x" thread on the ant-dev list.
One of the topics that was mentioned was the status of the <cc> task over in ant-contrib project at SourceForge. I think it is premature to move it to the Apache CVS until we are able to build some serious projects with it and have refined it a bit more. I'm just starting to use it to try to build Xerces-C and am finally able to spend working with it. I'd hate to freeze the task syntax at this point. In a previous message (http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/18057/0/7785927/) on the ant-contrib-developers mailing list, I discussed the problem on the parts of the compile fileset being dependent on properties. For example, you'd only want to src/xercesc/util/NetAccessors/WinSock/*.cpp files compiled when "use-winsock" was defined and would have different files compiled when use-libwww, use-socket or use-macosurl were defined. In that message, I described the problem and threw out a couple of ways of approaching the issue within the <cc> task. However, with a little (but not much more) thought, it seems that adding an "if" and "unless" attribute to <fileset> (or maybe <includes> and <excludes>) might be a more generally useful approach. However, I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a feel for how complicated that would be and whether it would be an affront to some Ant ethos. (There would also need to be a "if" and "unless" on <defineset> or <define> and <undefine>, but that is within the cpptasks code). If you are going to slam that suggestion, let me know how you would approach the problem. I'll continue trying to build Xerces-C and will report the possibly unpretty trials and tribulations on the ant-contributors mailing list. After we can build Xerces-C using VC on Win32 and gcc on Linux, then it would be a good opportunity with developers who have access to other platforms to up the supported compilers and platforms. After that phase is complete, I'd think that <cc> would be ready to go mainstream.
