[pde-dev] Suggestions for a more useful build.properties

["thhal" <thhal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

When building a feature and its plugins from an Update Site, an
ant-script is created in each plugin. This script derives some values
from the build.properties.

I think it would be a good idea if the properties found there where
expanded. I three types of expansion in mind.

1. Normal variable expansion, i.e. to be able to write things like

source.myjar.jar = ${resource_loc:/src}/java

This is very useful if "/src" is a link. At present you have to expand
the link manually in build.properties.

2. Normal Ant property expansion, i.e. expansion of properties declared
earlier in the same file.

plugin.source = ${resource_loc:/src}
source.myjar.jar = ${plugin.source}/java

3. The ability to expand classpath variables (like ECLIPSE_HOME):

source.myjar.jar = ${classpath:MYCLASSPATHVAR}/machinery/src/java

The last expansion would become moot (covered by #1) if the
${classpath:} expansion was added to the standard set of variables.

Regards,

Thomas Hallgren