Re: [SUBMIT] New task, a task to manage arbitrary dependencies between files

[Jesse Glick <Je...@netbeans.com>]

"Craeg K. Strong" wrote:
> [snip]
> The dependset task compares a set of source files with a set of target
> files. If any of the source files is more recent than any of the target
> files, all of the target files are removed. [snip]

I think this would be cool--at least I've had the mentioned problem with
<style> and had to work around it by writing one hack target which runs
<uptodate>, another which runs the first and then deletes the target file(s)
if the first reported it was not up-to-date, and then the real target which
runs both of the preceding before running <style>. Simplifying the idiom here
would be nice.

-Jesse

-- 
Jesse Glick   <ma...@netbeans.com>
NetBeans, Open APIs  <http://www.netbeans.org/>
tel (+4202) 3300-9161 Sun Micro x49161 Praha CR

Re: [SUBMIT] New task, a task to manage arbitrary dependencies between files

["Craeg K. Strong" <cs...@arielpartners.com>]

>
>
>>[snip]
>>The dependset task compares a set of source files with a set of target
>>files. If any of the source files is more recent than any of the target
>>files, all of the target files are removed. [snip]
>>
>
>I think this would be cool--at least I've had the mentioned problem with
><style> and had to work around it by writing one hack target which runs
><uptodate>, another which runs the first and then deletes the target file(s)
>if the first reported it was not up-to-date, and then the real target which
>runs both of the preceding before running <style>. Simplifying the idiom here
>would be nice.
>
>-Jesse
>
Exactly so!     But-- there are other cases that would affect many more 
Ant users.  For example,

1) what happens when you change the ant build file?   Absolute 
correctness demands that a change to the
buildfile forces a complete rebuild.  Of course it would be nice to know 
whether that change actually
affects the build in question (or if it is simply a doc change or other 
innocuous).  However, it is better to be
safe than sorry.  

2) What about large property files?     <property 
file="lots-of-global-properties.properties"/>
If this file changes, we would probably like to force a complete rebuild 
as well.  See arguments above.

By judicious use of both the <dependset> task as well as the existing 
<uptodate> and <depend> tasks,
I feel we now can optimally handle all of these types of issues....

--Craeg