RE: [Ant-contrib-developers] Little issue with <outofdate>

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 > Out-of-date has two requirements:
 > 1) target files exists (the one I'm need here)

This isn't actually a requirement as I use outofdate to determine which 
target files are missing, but I would think that my "freakish" case should 
require a <mapper>, as should any case where the target files are not 
explicitly defined. I personally think that if a target file is missing 
then it should just be considered out of date, but...

 > 2) target files newer than sources (what I don't need here)

...in your case there are no sources, so I believe the build should fail at 
this point.  I just can't wrap my head around the mentality of using a task 
for something it wasn't designed for when there are other more explicit 
(and therefore self documenting) ways to do the job. The reason outofdate 
requires sourcefiles and targetfiles is that it's purpose is to compare the 
two sets. If you don't have two sets of files then the next guy to come 
along and see your build file could be just as lost as I am trying to 
figure out why this task is being used at all.

Brad

At 10:04 AM 4/23/2003, Dominique Devienne wrote:
>Well, sure you can, but it's just a degenerate case of <outofdate>, much
>less expressive for that matter! Compare to:
>
> > >     <outofdate>
> > >       <sourcefiles />
> > >       <targetfiles>
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h" />
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h" />
> > >       </targetfiles>
> > >       <sequential>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h">...</echo>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h">...</echo>
> > >       </sequential>
> > >     </outofdate>
>
>Out-of-date has two requirements:
>1) target files exists (the one I'm need here)
>2) target files newer than sources (what I don't need here)
>
>Missing target files *are* out-of-date, irrelevant of the source files,
>whether you have some or not. Seems so obvious to me... --DD
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Brad Clarke [mailto:bc...@bo...]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 9:52 AM
>To: ant...@li...
>Subject: RE: [Ant-contrib-developers] Little issue with <outofdate>
>
>outofdate is a task designed to compare one set of files against another
>and react when there are conflicts. Your case seems to be that if either of
>two files don't exist you want to generate both of them. To me it would
>make a lot more sense as something like this:
>
><if>
>          <not>
>                  <and>
>                          <available file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h"/>
>                          <available file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h"/>
>                  </and>
>          </not>
>          <then>
>                  <sequential>
>                          <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h">...</echo>
>                          <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h">...</echo>
>                  </sequential>
>          </then>
></if>
>At 09:23 AM 4/23/2003, Dominique Devienne wrote:
> >I thought you might say that, but in this case, the content of files will
> >never change anymore (for sure), and doing as you say would force the
> >recompilation of *everything* since these headers are included (indirectly)
> >by everything. I very often change the common.xml XML entity included for
> >things unrelated to these two headers, and a one hour recompilation of 500K
> >lines of C++ as a consequence is simply unacceptable.
> >
> >I thus *really* think an empty <sourcefiles/> should be legal!
> >
> >I (heartily ;-) disagree with you about your fixing the 'bug' alternatives:
> >Whining dismisses my use case (which I persist is valid), and always
> >executing <sequential> simply is wrong, since shouldn't be executed when
>the
> >target files exits.
> >
> >I'd hate to be forced to fork <outofdate>. --DD
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: peter reilly [mailto:pet...@co...]
> >Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 3:24 AM
> >To: Dominique Devienne; ant...@li...
> >Subject: Re: [Ant-contrib-developers] Little issue with <outofdate>
> >
> >I am not to sure I agree with your usecase.
> >_undefs.h and _defines.h are generated files - but
> >there are not generated out of thin air!.
> >
> >In this case they depend on the build.xml file, i.e. if
> >the build.xml file changes (in particular the contents of
> ><echo file =...></echo> in the <sequential/>) the target
> >files need to be changed.
> >
> >I would (and have in my build files) do
> ><outofdate>
> >    <sourcefiles path="build.xml"/>
> >     <targetfiles>
> >         <...>
> >     </targetfiles>
> >      <sequential>
> >         <.../>
> >      </sequential>
> ></outofdate>
> >
> >As regards targets that have no source dependencies, I will need to think
> >about it.
> >
> >The empty sourcefiles example does looks like a bug, either
> >outofdate should whine, or always run sequential - I am not too sure which!
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Peter
> >
> >On Tuesday 22 April 2003 21:36, Dominique Devienne wrote:
> > > I wanted to use <outofdate> like this:
> > >     <outofdate>
> > >       <targetfiles>
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h" />
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h" />
> > >       </targetfiles>
> > >       <sequential>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h">...</echo>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h">...</echo>
> > >       </sequential>
> > >     </outofdate>
> > >
> > > But was forced to use it like this:
> > >     <outofdate>
> > >       <sourcefiles>
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/enter_scope.h" />
> > >       </sourcefiles>
> > >       <targetfiles>
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h" />
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h" />
> > >       </targetfiles>
> > >       <sequential>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h">...</echo>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h">...</echo>
> > >       </sequential>
> > >     </outofdate>
> > >
> > > i.e. I was forced to put a dummy source file to make it work.
> > >
> > > Worse, I tried to do:
> > >     <outofdate>
> > >       <sourcefiles />
> > >       <targetfiles>
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h" />
> > >         <pathelement location="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h" />
> > >       </targetfiles>
> > >       <sequential>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_undefs.h">...</echo>
> > >         <echo file="${lib.defs.dir}/_defines.h">...</echo>
> > >       </sequential>
> > >     </outofdate>
> > >
> > > (and removed the target files to force regeneration), and *nothing*
> > > happened/was generated.
> > >
> > > I personally think that this use case is acceptable, i.e. when one needs
> >to
> > > generate files from nothing (out of thin air), one doesn't have a source
> > > file, but the generation process should nonetheless happen if the target
> > > files are *not found*. I can live with being forced to have a
><sourcefiles
> > > />, although not having one at all seems fine to me, but I consider the
> > > current behavior of not executing the nested sequential when a target
>file
> > > is not found and one has an empty <sourcefiles/> a bug.
> > >
> > > Let me know what you think. --DD
> >
> >
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