DO NOT REPLY [Bug 30459] New: - Support for Functions

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http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30459

Support for Functions 

           Summary: Support for Functions
           Product: Ant
           Version: 1.1
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: Other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Normal
          Priority: Other
         Component: Core
        AssignedTo: dev@ant.apache.org
        ReportedBy: Nagendra.Raja@sun.com


Not sure if I am trying to bring in Generic Language features in ant. Just 
passing on my thoughts to forum to decide if this makes sense.

This idea came to me while I was trying to compile huge number of c files, 
whose compilation is very similar except for few arguments. For compiling the 
files 
I used the following code to compile the files

<exec executable="${cc}" dir="${storage.src}/" failonerror="true">
	    <arg line="${cc.arg.line.prefix} xyz.c -o ${cc.obj.dir}/../xyz.o"/>
</exec>
<exec executable="${cc}" dir="${storage.src}" failonerror="true">
	    <arg line="${cc.arg.line.prefix} -KPIC xyz.c -o 
${cc.obj.dir}/xyz.o"/>
	</exec>

The first exec complies xyz.c file and places in one directory and the 2nd once 
also compiles the same xyz.c with different compiler options and places it in a 
different directory, which is one level up as the top one.

It would be very clumsy to write similar staments for all the c files which 
exist in multiple directories of the project, unless we have a way out define 
function like syntax in ant.  

<FunctionCall name="compileC">
<arg name="cfile" value="xyz">
<arg name="directory" value="/opt/objs"
</FunctionCall>

<Function name="compileC" parms="cFile, directory">
<exec executable="${cc}" dir="${directory}/" failonerror="true">
	    <arg line="${cc.arg.line.prefix} cfile.c -o 
${cc.obj.dir}/../cfile.o"/>
</exec>
<exec executable="${cc}" dir="${directory}" failonerror="true">
	    <arg line="${cc.arg.line.prefix} -KPIC file.c -o 
${cc.obj.dir}/cfile.o"/>
	</exec>
</Function>

This could be futher simiplified if in case for loop kind of syntax in place 

The workaround for this to write a custom tag which does internally call the 
Builtin tasks. But this is less portable and flexible.

Not sure if this makes sense.

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