Dependency analysis, was: [Ant and Stylebook doc generation]

[Mike Pogue <mp...@apache.org>]

Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> 
> Philippe Lavoie wrote:
> >
> > Ant only recompiles .java file if they are modified.
> >
> > Is there a way to only generate the Docs if a xdocs/*.xml file was changed ?
> 
> No. Stylebook can't do that. Pier was waiting after the integration to
> come up with something like that, reusing the cocoon cache idea.
> 

To me, this feels more like an ANT thing, than a Stylebook thing. 
Dependency analysis is not a "core strength" of Stylebook.  So, although
Stylebook *could* be modified to add dependency analysis, I'd love to
see it factored out into something else that could be reused in another
context.  

In other words, I think that Stylebook should focus on publishing, with
something else (ANT? An add-on to ANT?) focusing on dependency
analysis.  

That way, we can reuse the dependency analysis part for other things
(like the regular build, which could use this, when there are multiple
targets).