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From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Magn=FAs_=DE=F3r_Torfason?= <magnus@handtolvur.is>
To: <ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org>
Subject: Handling build failures
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 10:31:21 -0000
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I have been reading the discussions on the list regarding a failure
task/target and saw that such a thing has been rejected.

I believe this/target task would be very convenient for a lot of people but
understand the arguments that the implications would be to great.

I have however been wondering if two additional attributes to the ant task
could alleviate this shortage.  The attributes would be:

failonerror:
Defaults to true, to preserve current behaviour, and determines if the
current project will fail if the called project fails

failproperty:
If specified, defines the name of a property that will be defined if the
called project fails, but not if it succeeds.


This would enable a large build to be put together from small builds,
handling failure of subprojects (which may not be critical) appropriately.
Also, this would enable special handling, such as mailing the log for the
failed build to a responsible person, in an automatic build environment.

Forcing people to resort to shell/batch files to handle failed builds, or
writing their own build listener, seems to me to be a rather inconvenient
solution for handling failed builds, in the long run.  This addition would
enable build failures to be handled completely in ant instead.

Cheers,

Magnus Torfason