Question about depend task

[Rhino <rh...@sympatico.ca>]

I've been looking at the 'depend' task and wonder if I can use it to
determine all of the dependencies that a given class has - INCLUDING the
dependents of the dependents of the dependents, etc. NOT JUST the first
generation dependents.

Unfortunately, the manual article about 'depend' is more confusing than
enlightening. It says:
"The depend task works by determining which classes are out of date with
respect to their source and then removing the class files of any other
classes which depend on the out-of-date classes."

Just what do they mean by "removing the class files of any other classes"??
To me, 'remove' is more or less synonymous with 'delete' and I do NOT want
anything deleted from my IDE (Eclipse)! I simply want to know all of the
classes upon which a given class depends (RECURSIVELY!!) so that I can jar
them together.

The impression that things are getting deleted is strongly re-inforced by
this phrase, further down in the 'Description' section: "Any classes which
depend on an element from this classpath and which are older than that
element will be deleted."

I *hope* that I am just misunderstanding the situation and that the only
'removing' and 'deleting' is within the *cache* which stores dependency
information but I am not about to take the chance of blowing away good code
without some clear assurances that 'depend' does NOT delete any source code.

Can anyone who has used 'depend' give me those assurances?




Rhino
---
rhino1 AT sympatico DOT ca
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it
so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." - C.A.R.
Hoare



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