Unifying property and reference namespaces

[Conor MacNeill <co...@cortexebusiness.com.au>]

Hi,

I have been looking at bug 1510
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1510

The patch supplied will pass filters and references to subprojects.
Firstly, this needs to be incorporated into the inheritAll behaviour that I
have just committed. However, I think this issue needs more thought since
the patch, as presented, would mean that filters and references are
overridable whilst properties are not. Also, if we do set inheritAll to
false, we might want to selectively pass filters and references. That would
suggest the need for nested <filter> and <reference> elements in <ant> and
<antcall>.

A better approach would be to unify the property, filter and reference
namespaces now. We know this will be the case for Ant2, and it would solve
many problems in this area too. The overriding behaviour could be common,
and a single nested element could pass any sort of datatype to the called
<ant>. The downside would be backward compatibility issues. I'm not sure
how great they would be.

Thoughts?

Conor

Re: Unifying property and reference namespaces

[Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>]

On Sat,  7 Jul 2001 00:24, Stefan Bodewig wrote:
> > The downside would be backward compatibility issues. I'm not sure
> > how great they would be.
>
> I'm not sure either, but I'm afraid it would affect quite a few
> builds.

yup ;( While it would be a nice feature I don't think it would be wise to 
break backwards compatibility with 1.4.

Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
*-----------------------------------------------------*

Re: Unifying property and reference namespaces

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>]

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Conor MacNeill <co...@cortexebusiness.com.au>
wrote:

> However, I think this issue needs more thought since the patch, as
> presented, would mean that filters and references are overridable
> whilst properties are not.

Which we probably need for backwards compatibilty anyway - I wouldn't
be surprised to see a <path> named classpath both in a master and a
subproject build file.

> A better approach would be to unify the property, filter and
> reference namespaces now.

This will off course break backwards compatibilty at several levels.

> We know this will be the case for Ant2, and it would solve many
> problems in this area too.

Agreed.

> The overriding behaviour could be common, and a single nested
> element could pass any sort of datatype to the called <ant>.

Is this an approach to unify them into a single <property> (or
whatever) thing outside of <ant> as well?

> The downside would be backward compatibility issues. I'm not sure
> how great they would be.

I'm not sure either, but I'm afraid it would affect quite a few
builds.

Stefan