Thanks for replying. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough to get to my central confusion. Just some follow-up questions here.
Stefan Bodewig wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Douglas Kramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm new to Ant and have been wanting to understand optional tasks
better. I'm trying to decide between using ReplaceRegExp
and PropertyFile (which is more what I want, but has the
comment bug). I wanted to figure out which to use based
perhaps on the library for it.
PropertyFile doesn't need any additional library.
Then why is it an Optional task? What's optional about it? Did it used to be optional?
In fact, the following paragraph refers to core tasks as "built-in", implying that optional tasks are not built-in:
There is a set of <a href="coretasklist">built-in tasks</a>, along with a number of <a href="optionaltasklist">optional tasks</a>, but it is also very easy to write your own.
http://ant.apache.org/manual/using.html
Okay, I did just find a description of Optional task on the installation page:
Ant supports a number of optional tasks. An optional task is a task which typically requires an external library to function. The optional tasks are packaged together with the core Ant tasks. The external libraries required by each of the optional tasks is detailed in the Library Dependencies section.
It sounds like PropertyFile does not require an external library, so why is it in the optional list? This is confusing.
If it was optional for some earlier version of Ant but is no longer optional, please document at which version it became core. And for the 1.6.2 documentation, please move it to the core list. (I'll gladly submit a doc bug against this if it makes sense for this to be done -- right now I'm just trying to figure out if it's me or the documentation that is confused.)
In theory ReplaceRegExp on JDK 1.4 doesn't either, but we highly recommend using ORO over using JDK's java.util.regexp package.
BTW, is the comment bug a known one? I.e. has it been reported? If not, please help us find and fix the bug.
Yes, it's known (though I haven't looked to see if it's in the bug database), cause it's in the manual:
PropertyFile
Note that the original comment is now lost. Please keep this in mind when running this task against heavily commented properties files. It may be best to have a commented version in the source tree, copy it to a deployment area, and then run the modifications on the copy. Future versions of PropertyFile will hopefully eliminate this shortcoming.
http://ant.apache.org/manual/OptionalTasks/propertyfile.html
We have a copyright statement at the top of the property file, and it would be too much hassle to post-process the file to put it back in.
But the documentation doesn't seem to mention clearly which libraries they reside in.
The tasks reside in the Ant download, you need the library to run the tasks.
I don't understand this. I need which library to run the tasks? The core library or an external library? Or is there an optional library in the ant 1.6.2 download bundle?
-Doug
Or are all optional tasks included in ant 1.6.2?
Yes.
Stefan
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