On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Matt Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My thinking here was if there existed two file > collection abstractions, say > o.a.t.a.types.AbstractFileSet and > o.a.t.a.types.maybenewpackagehere.NewFileSetInterface, > each could be <typedef>d to adapt to the other, so > that the maximum number of Tasks could use both with > no change in functionality as Tasks were converted to > use the new interface.
I see. Yes, I think this is possible, see <typedef>s adapter and adaptto attributes. But I share Antoine's concern that this will not work as transparently as one would like since most if not all tasks working on FileSets really deal with File objects created from them. > But the adaptation would only take place after the true class had > been tried. This again might be difficult to do. > allowing the user to choose his file-handling implementation seems > akin to allowing to choose from regular expression implementations. The user chooses by setting a system property. This takes more than the presence/absence of an antlib. This may be a model for the file system abstraction as well, though. >> commons-vfs >> >> > already done it, but it also becomes a dependency, >> > most likely, and a sandbox dependency at that... >> >> and to top it, one where development seems to have >> stopped right now. >> > That is kind of bad. But based on its documentation > alone, commons-vfs does seem to allow clients to add > custom "protocols" (my pet one is "property:"). If > this works, then anyone could develop and submit > support for more protocols. So maye no project-led > development is required. But somebody would have to pick up commons-vfs development to get it into a releaseable state and make a release 8-) > Also, you mentioned not wanting to accumulate > dependencies... but that IS the purpose of the > commons, is it not? But not Ant's ;-) > And at least you can pick and choose among the commons components. > I am not necessarily in favor of adding vfs or anything else as a > core dependency, but there are only so many ways we can go. I for > one would be delighted to hear any ideas that will work. I don't have an answer if a file system abstraction has to become part of Ant's core. Stefan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
