Ant build.xml

pbarry

I need to pass command-line arguments into my build.xml

Any idea how to do this?

I know there's an <arg> tag but afaik that's used for passing arguments to an executable.

Cheers

-pb

Hobbes

http://ant.apache.org/manual/

The two you are looking for are...

ant build.xml -D<property>=<value>

Creates a property with set value. If you want to load a properties file then..

ant build.xml -propertyfile <name>

Personally I create a properties file and reference it in the build xml like so..

<property file="build.properties"/>

In that file I put all my properties.

I also tell it to reference the system properties (SET) with this..
<property environment="env"/>

Then reference System environment variables like so
${env.PATH}
${env.CLASSPATH}

pbarry

Cheers Hobbes,

A little bit more detail on what I'm doing:

I have a CommandLineParser class which defines 3 command-line options(eg. -a, -b, -c).

I then have a target in my build.xml - "my-target".

So in the cmd, when I want to build the target I want to be able to use the following:

ant my-target -a argument1

argument1 will be used to set a configuration variable in the application.

The CommandLineParser is executed within "my-target".

Is this the correct flow in order to achieve the above? Can I pass argument1 from "my-target" to the (String[] args) of CommandLineParser's main method?



Cheers

Hobbes

shouldn't it be ...

ant build.xml my-target -Dcmdarg="-a argument1"

then run your command line parser with ${cmdarg} as the argument.

pbarry

Cheers Hobbes,

I'll give it a go so.....I'm a bit flaky on Ant so just trying to piece it together.

-pb

pbarry

Ok,

So I got that working Hobbes, nice one.

Next Q is this:

I now have a build.xml and two forked scripts build1.xml and build2.xml.

How can I execute the child scripts from the main script build.xml?

Is it a case of using:

<java classname="build2 class name" dir="${YYY}/.." fork="true" failonerror="true"><classpath>
<pathelement location="${XXX}"/>
<fileset dir="${TTT}" includes="*.jar" excludes="ant.jar" />
</classpath>	
</java>

Cheers

-pb

Hobbes

use ANT or ANTCALL commands. Try the manual its pretty good.

example:

<ant antfile="build2.xml" dir="directory"/>

pbarry

Cool,

I've been crawling through the manual but its hard to find what you need when you don't know what you're looking for!

appreciate it hobbes..........