I'm a oldtime make user who is now adjusting to ant (which I love BTW).
In make you use dependencies to enforce ordering of targets. You can do the same
thing in ant using the "depends" attribute. In ant you can also directly invoke other
ant targets using the "antcall" builtin task. The build files below are similar in
that the "all" target causes "subtask" to be run and then "all"; one uses antcall the
other uses depends. The "antcall" solution has the side-effect of unconditionally
invoking all dependencies of "subtask" so in this example you see the "init" target
invoked twice. However "antcall" is nice in that you can pass properties to the
invoked target.
So I guess I'm just looking for best practice advice here. Do people avoid antcall?
Use it a lot? As needed? I dislike the reinvocation of the "init" target but don't
know how else to build a reusable target that can be invoked at oher points in the
build file (with varying properties as arguments).
Thanks for your opinions!
<!-- START -->
<project name="antcall" default="all">
<target name="init">
<echo message="init task"/>
</target>
<target name="all" depends="init">
<antcall target="subtask"/>
<echo message="all task"/>
</target>
<target name="subtask" depends="init">
<echo message="subtask task"/>
</target>
</project>
<!-- END -->
<!-- START -->
<project name="depends" default="all">
<target name="init">
<echo message="init task"/>
</target>
<target name="all" depends="init,subtask">
<echo message="all task"/>
</target>
<target name="subtask" depends="init">
<echo message="subtask task"/>
</target>
</project>
<!-- END -->
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John Lindwall mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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