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Subject: Re: [RFE] Richer Task Specification
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What if we allow all tasks (as opposed to just properties and taskdefs) to
be used outside of targets , and execute them on the spot? They would be
similar to "static {...}" blocks in java, in that they get run as soon as
the class/project is loaded. So at the top of your build file you could
just put the following, which would cause the javac task to run before the
taskdef:

<project name="foo">

     <javac srcdir="lib" destdir="lib"/>
     <taskdef name="xslt" classname="Xslt" classpath="lib"/>

     <target name="bar">
     ...


Or, if we decide to wait until execution time to instantiate tasks, we
could add a "target" attribute to taskdef, which would cause that target to
be built before loading the task class:

<project name="foo>
     <taskdef name="xslt" classname="Xslt" classpath="lib" target
="xslt-compile"/>

     <target name="xslt-compile">
          <javac srcdir="lib" destdir="lib"/>
     </target>
...

Using this system, we can avoid compiling the task until we actually need
to use it.

Matt Foemmel
ThoughtWorks, Inc.


                                                                                                              
                    rubys@us.ibm.                                                                             
                    com                  To:     ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org                                   
                                         cc:                                                                  
                    06/18/2000           Subject:     Re: [RFE] Richer Task Specification                     
                    07:23 AM                                                                                  
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duncan wrote:
> > Nested taskdef elements, with identical syntax to the current taskdef
> > task, could be used to generate the necessary <include> statements on
> > the javac and then to define the mapping between classname and task
> > name.  Users could obviously add their own <include> statements if
> > necessary.
>
> Could you propose a sample of how this would be stated in XML?

Here is a sample that could be useful in xml-fop:

   <compileTask srcdir="lib" destdir="lib">
     <taskdef name="xslt" classname="Xslt" />
   </compileTask>

- Sam Ruby

P.S.  In order to further the discussion, I'm committing in an untested
implementation.  Monday(-ish) I'll test it and contribute documentation
(unless somebody wishes to beat me to it).