I have a 'Sync' task we use in our projects that I would like to submit as a
possible replacement for the current Copy (previously named Resources) task. I
don't use ant to actually do the copy (although I am currently using the groovy
ant.FileScanner to iterate over the source files). This is a little faster than
ant (especially when there is nothing out of date) and I can check the status
afterwards to see if anything was done. I would like some feedback on the
current DSL syntax used to configure it.
BTW, this is called a Sync task instead of copy because it will optionally
delete target files if the source is no longer present.
Please bear with me in this email - it is a contrived example where there is
really no need to have a global exclude since the specific includes are so
specific. There are real reasons to have both global types of configuration
values and some that are restricted to a particular source directory (as is
supported in the existing Copy task).
For review, the current Copy task has a configuration syntax like:
copyTask {
from(file('javasource'), file('scriptsource'), file('resources'))
into(file('build/copiedstuff')
excludes('**/*.bak')
includes(file('javasource'), '**/*.java')
includes(file('scriptsource'), '**/*.script')
includes(file('resources'), '**/*.properties')
includes(file('resources'), '**/*.png')
}
When I added support for regular expression based name mapping to my original
task, I decided that I didn't like having the source file specified again to
differentiate global and specific conditions, so I tried something else. You
might find this more awkward so please let me know. Currently I use nested
'SyncSpecs' which works like this:
syncTask {
into('build/copiedstuff')
excludes('**/*.bak')
add {
from('javasource')
includes('**/*.java')
}
add {
from('scriptsource')
includes('**/*.script')
}
add {
from('resources')
includes('**/*.properties', '**/*.png')
}
}
The 'add' method is used to create and configure a child SyncSpec. SyncSpecs
inherit values from their parent. A root SyncSpec is created as a part of the
Sync task and SyncTask delegates to it, so normal single source copies are
configured directly on the task:
syncTask {
from 'mysource'
into 'build/mydest'
includes "**/OEM_${oemname}*"
mapname "OEM_${oemname}_(.*)", '\\1'
}
I found myself almost always using files relative to the project directory, so I
added forms of into and from that take plain strings as relative paths from
there instead of requiring use of Project.file().
I don't really like using just 'add' for the method to create a child SyncSpec.
I would love suggestions for another name here. I have considered: 'subspec',
'sub', 'child' and others, but don't really like any of these names.
Please let me know if you like this approach at all or if you would rather just
use the current global / specific approach using the sourcedir file as the key.
--
Steve Appling
Automated Logic Research Team
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