DependSet

A task to manage arbitrary dependencies between files.

Description

The dependset task compares a set of source files with a set of target files. If any of the source files is more recent than any of the target files, all of the target files are removed.

Source files and target files are specified via nested FileSets and/or nested FileLists. Arbitrarily many source and target filesets/filelists may be specified, but at least one filelist/fileset is required for both sources and targets.

Use a FileSet when you want to use wildcard include or exclude patterns and don't care about missing files. Use a FileList when you want to consider the non-existence of a file as if it were out of date. If there are any non-existing files in any source or target FileList, all target files will be removed.

DependSet is useful to capture dependencies that are not or cannot be determined algorithmically. For example, the <style> task only compares the source XML file and XSLT stylesheet against the target file to determined whether to restyle the source. Using dependset you can extend this dependency checking to include a DTD or XSD file as well as other stylesheets imported by the main stylesheet.

Parameters

(none)

Parameters Specified as Nested Elements

srcfileset

The nested srcfileset element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will be compared against all files included in all of the targetfileset filesets and targetfilelist filelists. Multiple srcfileset filesets may be specified.

srcfilelist

The nested srcfilelist element specifies a FileList. All files included in this filelist will be compared against all files included in all of the targetfileset filesets and targetfilelist filelists. Multiple srcfilelist filelists may be specified.

targetfileset

The nested targetfileset element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will be compared against all files included in all of the srcfileset filesets and sourcefilelist filelists, and if any are older, they are all deleted.

targetfilelist

The nested targetfilelist element specifies a FileList. All files included in this filelist will be compared against all files included in all of the srcfileset filesets and sourcefilelist filelists, and if any are older, they are all deleted.

Examples

    

    <dependset>

       <srcfilelist

           dir   = "${dtd.dir}"

           files = "paper.dtd,common.dtd"/>

       <srcfilelist

           dir   = "${xsl.dir}"

           files = "common.xsl"/>

       <srcfilelist

           dir   = "${basedir}"

           files = "build.xml"/>

       <targetfileset

           dir      = "${output.dir}"

           includes = "**/*.html"/>

    </dependset>

In this example derived HTML files in the ${output.dir} directory will be removed if any are out-of-date with respect to:

the DTD of their source XML files
a common DTD (imported by the main DTD)
a subordinate XSLT stylesheet (imported by the main stylesheet), or
the buildfile

If any of the source files in the above example does not exist, all target files will also be removed. To ignore missing source files instead, use filesets instead of filelists for the source files.