Gant

Currently the global hooks and the per-target hooks are different and independent lists. I think they should perhaps stay that way rather than create a complex interdependencies, the rules for which will always annoy someone.

This implies that what is needed is a global way of managing the per-target tests. Currently the verbosity level is the only tool available. This is changed by setting the org.codehaus.gant.GantState.verbosity variable. However the system is somewhat silly in that you also need to explicitly transfer this to the AntBuilder instance:

import org.codehaus.gant.GantState

GantState.verbosity = GantState.SILENT
ant.logger.setMessageOutputLevel ( GantState.verbosity ) 

target ( sayHello : '' ) { println 'Hello'  }

target ( hello : 'Say hello.' ) { sayHello ( ) }

setDefaultTarget ( hello )

If manipulating the verbosity level is what this issue is about then the job of work is actually to make the setting of the verbosity level easier – both in Gant scripts and in the Gant source itself.

The trouble is that I want all the usual ant logging, just want to control the begin and end messaging.

OK, that militates in favour of special global operations on the hooks.

If the targets registered themselves with a central list of targets then we could have functions that iterated over all the targets doing things to them.

This might lead to interesting alternatives to the global / per-target hook split as it is now.

Russel, I have a related question regarding a different use. If I have a Gant binding, how can I set the set the verbosity level? It relates to your comment above:

If manipulating the verbosity level is what this issue is about then the job of work is actually to make the setting of the verbosity level easier in both in Gant scripts and in the Gant source itself.

The verbosity level is held separately in the GantState as a global static and also in the Ant project associated with the GantBuilder instance. This separation is a hang over and needs refactoring so that the verbosity is held only in the GantBuilder instance. Currently there is no simple API for dealing with all this: originally there was just the global variable and that was fairly straightforward both within Gant and from a script. With the current set up everything is messy.

Alternative one is to set up a proper property system in GantState. Alternative two is to have proper accessors in GantBuilder. Making the way of manipulating things the same for both Gant internals and scripts is probably the best goal.

It is believed that solving GANT-117 and releasing Gant 1.9.2 has in fact dealt with this issue.