Hi Sam,

From my point of view, a solid approach would simply be to override
Ant's <xmlproperty> task with a new attribute like "setempty", set to
"false", or "true" depending on the convenience, by default... Then use
<taskdef> to define your overriding class as the <xmlproperty> task.

Olivier

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Migrating form ANT 1.6 to 1.7: xmlproperty
From: Samuel Monsarrat <samuel.monsarrat@(protected)>
To: user@(protected)
Date: 19/02/2008 21:49

> I am attempting to migrate a large ANT build system from 1.6 to 1.7 and
> am running into a problem with xmlproperty.
> We use xmlproperty massively in our build system and very often "stack"
> several xmlproperty calls in order to build a complex property 'tree',
> where several inter-dependent build files will declare and/or overload
> parts of the tree using xmlproperty.
> Our approach however is completely incompatible with ANT 1.7 due to a
> modification to xmlproperty (bug 26286 c.f.
> http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=26286) that forces
> "empty" elements in an XML property tree to be declared.
>
> Consider the following exemple:
> ===> build_A.xml :
> <project name="Bui_A" default="All">
>   <xmlproperty file="about_A.xml"/>
>   <import file="build_B.xml"/>
>   <target name="All">
>     <ant target="Bui_B.main"/>
>   </target>
> </project>
>
> ===> about_A.xml:
> <app>
>   <version developmentStage="beta"/>
> </app>
>
> ===> build_B.xml :
> <project name="Bui_B">
>   <xmlproperty file="about_B.xml"/>
>   <target name="Bui_B.main">
>     <echo message="The version number is: '${app.version}'"/>
>     <echo message="The development stage is:
> ${app.version(developmentStage)}"/>
>     <!-- etc.... -->
>   </target>
> </project>
>
> ===> about_B.xml:
> <app>
>   <version developmentStage="final">2.4.0</version>
> </app>
>
> The aim is : When running build_A.xml use most of about_B.xml but
> overload certain parts of it with about_A.xml
>
> In ANT 1.6 about_A.xml would only set property
> app.version(developmentStage) effectively overloading the
> developmentStage defined in about_B.xml, but with ANT 1.7, about_A.xml
> also sets the property app.version to "empty" thus making it impossible
> for about_B.xml to define it as 2.4.0.
>
> In ANT 1.6 the output is:
> [echo] The version number is: '2.4.0'
> [echo] The development stage is: 'beta'
>
> in ANT 1.7 the output is:
> [echo] The version number is: ''
> [echo] The development stage is: 'beta'
>
> This makes it impossible to use xmlproperty to overload a single path in
> a complex property tree, and therefore destroys one of the main features
> of the task as far as I can see.
> Has anybody come across the same problem? any workaround?
> Regards,
> Samuel.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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--
*Olivier Gies*

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