Main reason for "depends" is: ant is not a scripting language.
Never designed for that.
A buildfile should describe the build process and its "dependencies".
Another "side-effect" is that a dependend target is only executed once.
<target name="main" depends="one,two"/>
<target name="one" depends="common"/>
<target name="two" depends="common"/>
<target name="common"/>
--> common is executed once (when "ant main")
when "ant one two" the common is executed twice (should that be???)
<target name="main" depends="one,two"/>
<target name="one"><antcall target="common"/></target>
<target name="two"><antcall target="common"/></target>
<target name="common"/>
--> common is executed twice
Jan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack J. Woehr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 11:06 PM
> To: Ant Users List
> Subject: Manual verbiage: calling vs dependency
>
>
> May I suggest the following verbiage for somewhere in the Ant
> manual? I had trouble with
> this concept and it seems a lot of newbies do also.
>
> Calling versus Dependency
>
> Whenever you call into an Ant target via <antcall> or
> <ant>, any changes (e.g., setting properties)
> by the called target do not propagate back into the
> caller's environment. This is the reason targets
> which are the main line of an overall build tend to be
> referenced via the "depends" attribute, because
> changes to the environment (e.g., setting properties) by
> a target referenced as a depend *do* modify
> the dependent target's environment.
>
> Example:
>
> <target name="foo">
> <property name="woof" value="Bow-wow"/>
> </target>
>
> <!-- says "Bow-wow" -->
> <target name="bar" depends="foo">
> <echo message="${woof}"/>
> </target>
>
> <!-- says "${woof}" of course, uninstanced variable -->
> <target name="surprise">
> <antcall target="bar">
> <echo message="${woof}"/>
> </target>
>
> --
> Jack J. Woehr # You measure democracy by the freedom it
> Senior Consultant # gives its dissidents, not the freedom
> Purematrix, Inc. # it gives its assimilated conformists.
> www.purematrix.com # - Abbie Hoffman
>
>
>
>
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