At 05:45  7/3/01 -0800, David Rees wrote:
>I should say up front that my interests for Ant2 are much more from a
>design perspective than the actual functionality. I think what great
>about Ant1 is its extensibility. I think that the core and the API it
>gives to tasks (core or optional) for Ant2 is the most important thing
>that needs to be decided. Then let the world write whatever they want
>and we commit it in some common "let the user beware" add-on"
>directory (something less tested than optional with different support
>rules).

+1000
me too ;)

>Going further, you noticed I used set instead of add/create (I hate
>create BTW). 

Well the request for JavaBean stand rather than ant standard has come in a
bit so it will probably go through I suspect. However I would hate to see
indexed properties ever make it to ant and much prefer treating properties
as simple objects (even if they ar arrays). We of course would need to also
support the "old-style" at least during a transition period.

>I think we need to look at better understanding the fact
>that the attribute/element is very blurred in XML and that Ant blurs
>it much more. We need to support a common way for indicating either
>will work in a Task. Includes being good example. Do we even really
>need a element for that, or could we support
>setIncludes(String aString)

Well I agree though I would do it like

setInclude( IncludeEntry[] entrys );

because include will most likely have multiple attributes. We could still
support

<mytask include="**/*.java" />

my implementing converters that convert from string to IncludeEntry type.
(A feature that is much requested in certain domains like web-site
development). 

so

<mytask include="**/*.java" /> 
<mytask>
  <include name="**/*.java" />
</mytask>
<mytask include="${myinclude}" />  

would be identical (assuming myinclude refers to an include datatype). They
would all end up doing roughly

setInclude( new IncludeEntry[] { new IncludeEntry( "**/*.java" ) } );



Cheers,

Pete

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| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
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