keeping characters un-escaped in attributes when processing with XSLT - xslt

Question

I'm transforming an ivy.xml file with XSLT, I basically want to update the rev attribute of a specific dependency tag. My problem is with the conf attribute, I want it to stay exactly the same, unfortunately > gets converted to >. My ivy file looks like this:
<ivy-module version="1.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://ant.apache.org/ivy/schemas/ivy.xsd">
<info organisation="foo" module="libfoo" revision="1.0.1"/>
<configurations>
</configurations>
<publications>
<artifact name="libfoo" type="jar" conf="default" />
</publications>
<dependencies>
<dependency org="easymock" name="easymock" rev="2.5.2" conf="test->default,class-extension"/>
</dependencies>
</ivy-module>
my XSL looks like this:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output />
<xsl:param name="dependency.rev" />
<xsl:param name="dependency.org" />
<xsl:param name="dependency.name" />
<xsl:template match="node()|#*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="dependency">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="#name=$dependency.name">
<xsl:attribute name="rev">
<xsl:value-of select="$dependency.rev" />
</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
and my output looks like this:
<dependency org="easymock" name="easymock" rev="2.5.2" conf="test->default,class-extension"/>
I've tried setting disable-output-escaping="no" on an explicit set of the conf attribute, but that didn't work
<xsl:attribute name="conf">
<xsl:value-of select="#conf" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
</xsl:attribute>

Answer 1

My problem is with the conf attribute,
I want it to stay exactly the same,
unfortunately > gets converted to
>.
You can't. As per the W3 XSLT Spec:
"It is an error for output escaping to be disabled for a text node that is used for something other than a text node in the result tree. Thus, it is an error to disable output escaping for an xsl:value-of or xsl:text element that is used to generate the string-value of a comment, processing instruction or attribute node"
There is nothing problematic in the conf attribute containing test->.
In fact, both
conf="test->default,class-extension"
and
conf="test->default,class-extension"
have exactly the same string value.
To verify this, just apply the following simple transformation:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="/*">
"<xsl:value-of select="#conf"/>"
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
to the "bad" result:
<dependency org="easymock"
name="easymock"
rev="2.5.2"
conf="test->default,class-extension"
/>
and what you get is:
"test->default,class-extension"
This is exactly the same as coding   instead of -- these are exactly the same characters, but specified in different ways.