On Jan 8, 2010, at 5:24 PM, Wascally Wabbit wrote:
Hello all--
I've just reviewed the latest Ant trunk (1.8RC1 I believe) to estimate
how much effort it would take to port my extensions (esp. those
dependent on the 1.7x PropertyHelper implementation). For this class
I have a few questions about current code:
Firstly, Wabbit.... I am somewhat at a loss because I personally
attempted, twice if I recall correctly, to engage you on this subject
back when the API redesign was taking place, what, over two years
ago? I don't want to appear unwilling to work with you here, but...
wow. This could have been a lot easier then, especially considering
the difference in code familiarity two years makes. In all honesty,
I've found a lot less time than I would like to work on OSS lately.
Ant in particular (and I hope this won't offend any of my comrades)
has suffered neglect from many of its developers as of late; I
vehemently include myself among the guilty.
1) No way for an evaluator to test if it's already installed as
getDelegates() is protected and there is no public getEvaluators()
method.
This is a fair assessment for you to have made from the API; however
the (base) implementation of PropertyHelper actually discards equal
delegates as they are installed. We could document this fact, and
probably make the method final. Would that suffice?
2) Still no way to have PropertyHelpers passed through to subprojects
automatically (all configuration lost). [See Project.initSubproject]
I can see how this might be desirable, but what happens when said
subproject installs a completely new PropertyHelper that has no idea
how to cope with the properties the parent project expects the
subproject to know how to interpret? This would seem to want more
discussion.
3) Even with the current rework, installing a recursive property
evaluator requires that I replace the entire PropertyHelper because:
1) The ParseProperties utility is created directly by the helper
and that's where the algorithm basically lies. I would be nice
to replace just *this* bit...
2) The ParseProperties seems to be assuming a sequential walk thru
the input string (it moves from left->right first getting a
property name then mapping that name to a value...) Maybe I'm
missing something here (I hope)?...
I am far less familiar with the relevant code now, but a recursive
property evaluator is certainly possible because it exists in the
[props] sandbox Antlib, which we will promote to proper and release
shortly after Ant 1.8.0 is released. I think perhaps what you've
missed is that ParseProperties is not meant to be extended by
PropertyHelper extensions (although I suppose in dire need it could
be extended or bypassed); it's simply a class which contains the
algorithms for parsing properties using whatever PropertyExpander
delegates live in the active PropertyHelper.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
Regards,
Matt
Thanks,
-The Wabbit
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