I've thought of this myself... It would indeed be possible, although target ordering is usually important, and it's not clear what the ordering should be when using a regex? Order in the build file? Alphabetical order?
The one requirement is that the dependencies of a target are statically described, and that it's not circular (a true DAG, Directed Acyclic Graph for those non-fluent in this english accronym that I discovered recently). Both these requirements are not incompatible with regex dependencies. As far as whether it's good style or not, I'm style reserved on the issue. Ant tries to be explicit and self describing, so maybe such dependencies is a bit opaque, but maybe not. I think its more an itch thing. I'm sure like you and me others have thought of that, but no one thought it important enough to spend the time on it. Maybe if you took a stab at it it would be accepted? Hard to say. I think I would use it at least. --DD -----Original Message----- From: Alban Peignier To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 12/11/2003 9:16 AM Subject: Selection of dependencies Hi, I'm looking for an answer to this small question. Why Ant doesn't support this kind of dependencies : <target name="dist" depends="dist.*"/> <target name="dist.lib" .. <target name="dist.jar" .. This target "pattern" is often used to avoid huge targets into big Ant scripts. The Target design seems to be able to support this kind of resolution. Is it incompatible with the "Ant style" ? Thanks for your answers Alban -- http://www.tryphon.org/~alban --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
