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To: ant-user@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: Re: Determine target's name
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From: Stefan Bodewig <bodewig@apache.org>
Date: 01 Mar 2002 10:12:27 +0100
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On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Drew Davidson <drew@eblox.com> wrote:

> Well if you want to reduce the maintenance burden then rm -fr * the
> whole repository.

Good idea, actually this is more or less the idea behind Ant2.

> The point remains, however, that this is a lame excuse.

I don't think so.  We are committing new features every day, as long
as we are convinced that they are needed.

This particular case has been brought up more than once, and it has
been vetoed by at least one committer every time it has come up.  To
challenge this veto, you need a use case that convinces this committer
(who is not me BTW).  But then again, it hasn't been brought up as
often as you imply it had.

Take if/unless attributes on <fail> for example.  I've always been
against them, but finally I have been the one to actually implement it
- because it came up that often.

> Systems built by accretion (like ant appears to be) mostly end up
> being chaotic unorganized piles of junk.

True - and this is exactly the way most open source projects have
evolved.  At some point you realize that things went out of control
and start to refactor or rewrite.  Ant is at the point that some
serious refactoring (some say a complete rewrite) is necessary.

> This is because the basic principles and fundamentals of the code
> are not well thought out.

Some people say that this is one of the most important conditions for
a successful open source project, great idea combined with bad code.

> To which I retort: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SometimesYourGuessWasWrong

I knew you would say that 8-)

This is why we ask for a use case.  Prove that we are guessing wrong.

> Target introspection is a good thing.

Why?  I'm sure, I am missing something.

When you write a task, you can do getOwningTarget().getName(), same
for <script> - what I haven't seen is a reason that put the name of
the current target into a property that has convinced me.

> I've seen several good reasons on this list for using it.

Could you please point me to them?

> Every time it's posted the committers (and their shills) all pop up

I can't follow the "and their skills" part.

> with the same lame argument about either (a) "give us a valid use
> case" with no idea at all as to what criteria is to be used for
> validating this use case

remove the "valid", explain what *you* want to use it for, not what
anybody maybe could do with it.

Stefan

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