Thanks for the replies.
Unfortunately, the suggested workarounds aren't really ideal either. I don't
want the <ant> task to use the current (containing) target, I want the ant task
to use the target that was provided on the command line - otherwise I still
have to put <ant> tasks in every top-level target. For instance, I have
compile, test, dist, etc... as top-level targets, but I really only want to put
the <ant> task in the lib target which is a prerequisite of all of the above.
But I'm still confused about the reluctance to embrace the original proposal.
Is there some fundamental design principle that would be violated by setting a
standard ant.target property which contained the target(s) specified by the
user on the command line and could then be passed on to the <ant> task? This
also avoids the messiness described below about breaking property immutability.
Thanks,
Sean Rohead
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Workaround:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<project name="test" basedir="." default="main">
<target name="main">
<script language="javascript"> <![CDATA[
name = self.getOwningTarget().getName();
project.setProperty("target.name",name);
]]></script>
<echo>target.name=${target.name}</echo>
<antcall target="script"/>
</target>
<target name="script">
<script language="javascript"> <![CDATA[
name = self.getOwningTarget().getName();
project.setProperty("target.name",name);
]]></script>
<echo>target.name=${target.name}</echo>
</target>
</project>
But itīs not the fine way to overwrite the property ...
I think it is no problem to implement. But then we will brake to golden
rule "properties are immutable" (see example).
If you have to specify the property in which the target name should be
stored,
you can code that in a normal <property/>. (... I got an idea ...)
If you want to have a "global" property (like ant.project.name) the value
has
to overwritten in each target (otherwise it wouldnīt be really useful).
Back to my idea:
A task which gets the current target name and tries to store it into a
property. Maybe it should fail if that property is already set (to a
different
value).
<target name="helloWorld">
<getTargetName property="tname"/>
<echo>${tname}</echo>
</target>
would print "helloWorld"
<getTargetName property="tname" fail="never|differ|isset"/>
control the behaviour if the property tname is already set
- never: donīt throw a BuildException (log in verbose); donīt set the
property
--> "properties are immutable"
- differ: throw a BE if the value differs from the current target name;
donīt set the property (useless, has the "right" value :-)
- isset: throw a BE if the property is set; set the property
Would that help?
Jan
