[VOTE] Porting 'file' attribute to 1.5 branch

[Erik Hatcher]

Contrary to what I've said before about making sure the external 
interface of 1.5 does not change with bug fixes, I'd like to propose 
that we port the addition of the file attribute on AbstractFileSet to 
the 1.5 branch.  This minor addition makes life so much easier, and I'm 
using this new attribute in all my builds now as well.

Before this addition, to get a fileset containing only a single file 
when that file is referred to by a property, you had to get a pointer to 
its parent directory somehow.  With property immutability and the 
possibility that someone could override whatever property you use for 
the parent directory, its not that safe.

I have two conflicting personal reasons for and against adding this to 1.5.
For: I'm going to be travelling around a bit soon speaking on 
Ant/XDoclet and all my example builds are using the 'file' attribute 
because its so much cleaner.  It would be nice if the attendees could be 
up and running with my samples with a released build of Ant 1.5.x 
(although I'll likely bundle my version of Ant with any samples I 
provide just to be on the safe side for now).

Against: My book does not document the 'file' attribute, of course, and 
that would take it a bit out of synch, although its all backwards 
compatible and we can add that to our errata list.

But the benefits to the Ant community outweigh any arguments against 
adding it, IMO.

So, here's my +1.
        Erik
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