s like: Every time you add a task to the subproject, you need to add an entry point in the project. A real syncronization problem. What I would like is to be able to say: So with a call like: ant subtarget1 subtarget2 ANT will execute the above template twice, once for each substitution and call the respective subtarget1 and subtarget2 in subproject.xml. Now notice that the template mechanism is more generic than just calling subprojects. It will allow for some nice things. I do not think that (2), in particular, can be solved with XSLT because you only know the substitution at execution time. Does this looks as something interesting to have? I think the approach is quite declarative in both cases, does anybody see a major problem with this? Jose Alberto Now, ------_=_NextPart_001_01C02D9B.5F4D03FC Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"

Writing some build files for our projects here I have come across several situations in which I would have liked having some sort of template facilities for ANT.

(1) This first is for tasks. The <java> tasks that I use are quite quite monotonous: Call this class with this arguments, then call it again but just change the last arguments, etc, etc.

One way to deal with this is to define my own task that extends <java> and that presets all that needs to be preset. But wouldn't it be nice to have a way to say tell ANT to do that without a need to declare and maintain new classes?

Something like:

</javataskdef>

Now I should be able to use:

</mytask>

And this should be equivalent to doing:

</java>

(2) A second situation where templates are interesting is when trying to interconnect tasks from on build file to another using the <ant> task. In this case one usially want to have access from the marter build file to the suordinate build files. Usually one would have <target>s like:

</target>

Every time you add a task to the subproject, you need to add an entry point in the project. A real syncronization problem. What I would like is to be able to say:

</target>

So with a call like:

ant subtarget1 subtarget2

ANT will execute the above template twice, once for each substitution and call the respective subtarget1 and subtarget2 in subproject.xml. Now notice that the template mechanism is more generic than just calling subprojects. It will allow for some nice things.

I do not think that (2), in particular, can be solved with XSLT because you only know the substitution at execution time.

Does this looks as something interesting to have? I think the approach is quite declarative in both cases, does anybody see a major problem with this?

Jose Alberto

Now,

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