extra attribute on dependency without consistency check

[Tim Enderling <T....@intershop.de>]

Hi,

we'd like to add an extra attribute to our <dependency> elements, that
is used from our own tools to gain additional information about a
dependency, but should have no significance to ivy whatsoever. This
works without complaints for the <info> and <artifact> attributes to add
data to a module or an artifact. For dependencies however I run into an
error when resolving a module with such a decorated dependency.

In the ivy.xml:
...
<dependency org="com.example" name="example"
version="latest.integration" e:contract="provider" />
..

Output when resolved:

:::: ERRORS
public_repository: bad contract found in
D:\resolvetests\repo\com.example\example\1\ivy.xml: expected='provider'
found='null'.

This message is coming from BasicResolver.checkDescriptorConsistency,
because there is no attribute "contract" on the <info>-tag of
com.example#example's ivy.xml (and it would make no sense to put it
there). Basically I want the attribute to really describe the dependency
and not the identity of the referenced module.

Any suggestion? (We have considered providing our own custom parser, but
we want to stay as close as possible to standard ivy.)

Thank You,
Tim Enderling