Can i reference external flex-config in flexunit ant task?

Question

flexunit gurus,
i'm trying to figure out how to best specify the compiler arguments for the flexunit ant task in flexunit 4.1 beta 1.  from the documentation i see this sample flexunit usage:
<flexunit workingDir="${bin.loc}" toDir="${report.loc}"
haltonfailure="false" verbose="true" localTrusted="true">
<testSource dir="${main.src.loc}" />
<testSource dir="${test.src.loc}">
<include name="**/*Test.as" />
</testSource>
<library dir="${lib.loc}" />
</flexunit>
in this example, the source and library paths are explicitly listed.  in this simple example all the needed libraries reside within a single directory.
when i build my application, i use a custom flex-config.xml file, as the following snippet shows:
        <mxmlc file="${application.file}" output="${swf.debug.file}" debug="true" headless-server="${headless.server}">
            <load-config filename="${flex.config.file}" />
        </mxmlc>
in that custom flex-config.xml file i list all the build options (e.g. source dirs, library paths, theme, etc.) appropriate for building the application.  the libraries i reference are in a number of different directories (in general each 3rd party library is in a different directory).
in the flexunit task, i could individually reference all the same libraries that are in the flex-config.xml, but that'd be a pain to keep them in sync.  i suppose i also could parse the flex-config.xml to extract the library information and use that to populate the library argument.  really what i want to say in the flexunit task is "build all source and tests as indicated in flex-config.xml, then run the tests", perhaps with a syntax like the following:
<flexunit workingDir="${bin.loc}"  toDir="${report.loc}"
haltonfailure="false" verbose="true" localTrusted="true">
            <load-config filename="${flex.config.file}" />
<testSource dir="${test.src.loc}">
<include name="**/*Test.as" />
</testSource>
<library dir="${flexunit.lib}" />
</flexunit>
i'd rather keep the flex-config.xml file free of any test specific information, so ideally i'd specify the path to the flexunit swc's and the test path in the flexunit task (as in the above example).
is there support for such usage currently or planned for in the future?  recommendations on how best to accomplish my goal of not duplicating library information already present in a custom flex-config.xml?
thanks.
-mike

Answer 1

hi brian,
thanks for your response.
i understand the desire to avoid re-implementing the flex sdk ant tasks.  i'm not sure that can reasonably be accomplished wihen the TestRunner is dynamically generated from within the flexunit task.  in addition to the source path and library path, the theme setting and namespaces settings can affect successful compilation, and the runtime-shared-library-path setting can affect whether the produced swf runs correctly.
perhaps there's an alternative.  what if we separate the creation of the TestRunner.mxml from the compilation and the execution of the tests.  if flexunit offers an ant task that can produce (but not run) a TestRunner.mxml, i can write the mxmlc task that compiles it properly, and then i can invoke the old style flexunit specifying the swf argument.  this would still accomplish my primary goal of not needing to manually enumerate every test file in a TestRunner.mxml that i have to maintain (and which neither Flash Builder nor maven builds require).  to compile the TestRunner.mxml, i'd load in my custom flex-config.xml, then append to the source path and library path to include my test directory and flexunit libraries.
maybe something like the following to create the TestRunner:
<generatetestrunner output="${bin.loc}/TestRunner.mxml">
          <testSource dir="${test.dir}">
             <include name="**/*Test.as" />
          </testSource>
</generatetestrunner>
thoughts?
one other thing i noticed about the current library argument to flexunit is that it assumes a directory even if you provide an explicit path to an swc (i tried switching <library dir...> to <library file...> but that didn't seem to make a difference).  in my case, there are specific swc's i need in the library path, and the task assuming i mean a directory when i specify an explicit swc is problematic.  the directory my swc libraries are contained in sometimes contain multiple and conflicting versions of a library (each library directory contains various snapshot builds of the library).  i need a way to explicitly indicate which library to use.
finally, could you point me to the java source for the flexunit ant tasks?  i've found the flexunit action script source ok but haven't found where the java ant task is defined.
thanks.
-mike