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  162. <div class="main">
  163. <div class="content">
  164. <h1 class="title">Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
  165. <h3 class="section">Questions</h3>
  166. <h4 class="toc">About this FAQ</h4>
  167. <ul>
  168. <li><a href="#latest-version">
  169. Where do I find the latest version of this
  170. document?
  171. </a></li>
  172. <li><a href="#adding-faqs">
  173. How can I contribute to this FAQ?
  174. </a></li>
  175. <li><a href="#creating-faq">
  176. How do you create the HTML version of this
  177. FAQ?
  178. </a></li>
  179. </ul>
  180. <h4 class="toc">General</h4>
  181. <ul>
  182. <li><a href="#what-is-ant">
  183. What is Apache Ant?
  184. </a></li>
  185. <li><a href="#ant-name">
  186. Why do you call it Ant?
  187. </a></li>
  188. <li><a href="#history">
  189. Tell us a little bit about Ant's history.
  190. </a></li>
  191. </ul>
  192. <h4 class="toc">Installation</h4>
  193. <ul>
  194. <li><a href="#no-gnu-tar">
  195. I get checksum errors when I try to extract the
  196. <code>tar.gz</code> distribution file. Why?
  197. </a></li>
  198. </ul>
  199. <h4 class="toc">How do I ...</h4>
  200. <ul>
  201. <li><a href="#adding-external-tasks">
  202. How do I add an external task that I've written to the
  203. page "External Tools and Task"?
  204. </a></li>
  205. <li><a href="#passing-cli-args">
  206. How do I pass parameters from the command line to my
  207. build file?
  208. </a></li>
  209. <li><a href="#jikes-switches">
  210. How can I use Jikes-specific command-line
  211. switches?
  212. </a></li>
  213. <li><a href="#shell-redirect-1">
  214. How do I include a &lt; character in my command-line arguments?
  215. </a></li>
  216. <li><a href="#shell-redirect-2">
  217. How do I redirect standard input or standard output
  218. in the <code>&lt;exec&gt;</code> task?
  219. </a></li>
  220. <li><a href="#batch-shell-execute">
  221. How do I execute a batch file or shell script from Ant?
  222. </a></li>
  223. <li><a href="#multi-conditions">
  224. I want to execute a particular target only if
  225. multiple conditions are true.
  226. </a></li>
  227. <li><a href="#encoding">
  228. How can I include national characters like German
  229. umlauts in my build file?
  230. </a></li>
  231. <li><a href="#use-zip-instead-of-jar">
  232. How do I use <code>jar</code>'s <code>M</code> switch?
  233. I don't want a MANIFEST.
  234. </a></li>
  235. <li><a href="#propertyvalue-as-name-for-property">
  236. How can I do something like <code>&lt;property name="prop"
  237. value="${${anotherprop}}"/&gt;</code> (double expanding the property)?
  238. </a></li>
  239. </ul>
  240. <h4 class="toc">It doesn't work (as expected)</h4>
  241. <ul>
  242. <li><a href="#always-recompiles">
  243. Why does Ant always recompile all my Java files?
  244. </a></li>
  245. <li><a href="#defaultexcludes">
  246. I've used a <code>&lt;delete&gt;</code> task to
  247. delete unwanted SourceSafe control files (CVS files, editor
  248. backup files, etc.), but it doesn't seem to work; the files
  249. never get deleted. What's wrong?
  250. </a></li>
  251. <li><a href="#stop-dependency">
  252. I have a target I want to skip if a property is set,
  253. so I have <code>unless="property"</code> as an attribute
  254. of the target, but all the targets this target
  255. depends on are still executed. Why?
  256. </a></li>
  257. <li><a href="#include-order">
  258. In my <code>&lt;fileset&gt;</code>, I've put in an
  259. <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code> of all files followed by an
  260. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> of just the files I want, but it
  261. isn't giving me any files at all. What's wrong?
  262. </a></li>
  263. <li><a href="#properties-not-trimmed">
  264. <code>ant</code> failed to build my program via javac
  265. even when I put the needed jars in an external
  266. <code>build.properties</code> file and reference them by
  267. <code>pathelement</code> or <code>classpath refid</code>.
  268. </a></li>
  269. <li><a href="#winzip-lies">
  270. Ant creates WAR files with a lower-case
  271. <code>web-inf</code> or JAR files with a lower-case
  272. <code>meta-inf</code> directory.
  273. </a></li>
  274. </ul>
  275. <h4 class="toc">Ant and IDEs/Editors</h4>
  276. <ul>
  277. <li><a href="#integration">
  278. Is Ant supported by my IDE/Editor?
  279. </a></li>
  280. <li><a href="#emacs-mode">
  281. Why doesn't (X)Emacs/vi/MacOS X's project builder
  282. correctly parse the error messages generated by Ant?
  283. </a></li>
  284. </ul>
  285. <h4 class="toc">Advanced Issues</h4>
  286. <ul>
  287. <li><a href="#dtd">
  288. Is there a DTD that I can use to validate my build
  289. files?
  290. </a></li>
  291. <li><a href="#xml-entity-include">
  292. How do I include an XML snippet in my build file?
  293. </a></li>
  294. <li><a href="#mail-logger">
  295. How do I send an email with the result of my build
  296. process?
  297. </a></li>
  298. <li><a href="#listener-properties">
  299. How do I get at the properties that Ant was running
  300. with from inside BuildListener?
  301. </a></li>
  302. </ul>
  303. <h4 class="toc">Known Problems</h4>
  304. <ul>
  305. <li><a href="#remove-cr">
  306. &lt;chmod&gt; or &lt;exec&gt; doesn't work in Ant
  307. 1.3 on Unix
  308. </a></li>
  309. <li><a href="#javadoc-cannot-execute">
  310. JavaDoc failed: java.io.IOException: javadoc: cannot execute
  311. </a></li>
  312. <li><a href="#delegating-classloader">
  313. &lt;style&gt; or &lt;junit&gt; ignores my
  314. &lt;classpath&gt;
  315. </a></li>
  316. <li><a href="#winxp-jdk14-ant14">
  317. When running Ant 1.4 on Windows XP and JDK 1.4, I get
  318. various errors when trying to <code>&lt;exec&gt;</code>, fork
  319. <code>&lt;java&gt;</code> or access environment
  320. variables.
  321. </a></li>
  322. <li><a href="#1.5-cygwin-sh">
  323. The <code>ant</code> wrapper script of Ant 1.5 fails
  324. for Cygwin if <code>ANT_HOME</code> is set to a Windows style
  325. path.
  326. </a></li>
  327. <li><a href="#1.5.2-zip-broken">
  328. <code>&lt;zip&gt;</code> is broken in Ant 1.5.2.
  329. </a></li>
  330. </ul>
  331. <h3 class="section">Answers</h3>
  332. <p class="faq">
  333. <a name="latest-version"></a>
  334. Where do I find the latest version of this
  335. document?
  336. </p>
  337. <p>The latest version can always be found at Ant's homepage
  338. <a href="http://ant.apache.org/faq.html">http://ant.apache.org/faq.html</a>.</p>
  339. <p class="faq">
  340. <a name="adding-faqs"></a>
  341. How can I contribute to this FAQ?
  342. </p>
  343. <p>The page you are looking it is generated from
  344. <a href="http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/~checkout~/ant/xdocs/faq.xml">this</a>
  345. document. If you want to add a new question, please submit
  346. a patch against this document to one of Ant's mailing lists;
  347. hopefully, the structure is self-explanatory.</p>
  348. <p>If you don't know how to create a patch, see the patches
  349. section of <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/site/source.html">this
  350. page</a>.</p>
  351. <p class="faq">
  352. <a name="creating-faq"></a>
  353. How do you create the HTML version of this
  354. FAQ?
  355. </p>
  356. <p>We use
  357. <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/anakia.html">Anakia</a>
  358. to render the HTML version from the original XML file.</p>
  359. <p>The Velocity stylesheets used to process the XML files can
  360. be found in the <code>xdocs/stylesheets</code> subdirectory of
  361. Ant's CVS repository - the build file
  362. <code>docs.xml</code> at the top level of the ant CVS
  363. module is used to drive Anakia.</p>
  364. <p>This file assumes that you have the
  365. <code>jakarta-site2</code> CVS module checked out as well, but
  366. if you follow the instruction from Anakia's homepage, you
  367. should get it to work without that. Just make sure all
  368. required jars are in the task's classpath.</p>
  369. <p class="faq">
  370. <a name="what-is-ant"></a>
  371. What is Apache Ant?
  372. </p>
  373. <p> Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of
  374. like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full
  375. portability of pure Java code.</p>
  376. <p class="faq">
  377. <a name="ant-name"></a>
  378. Why do you call it Ant?
  379. </p>
  380. <p>According to Ant's original author, James Duncan
  381. Davidson, the name is an acronym for "Another Neat
  382. Tool".</p>
  383. <p>Later explanations go along the lines of "ants
  384. do an extremely good job at building things", or
  385. "ants are very small and can carry a weight dozens of times
  386. their own" - describing what Ant is intended to
  387. be.</p>
  388. <p class="faq">
  389. <a name="history"></a>
  390. Tell us a little bit about Ant's history.
  391. </p>
  392. <p>Initially, Ant was part of the Tomcat code base, when it was
  393. donated to the Apache Software Foundation. It was
  394. created by James Duncan Davidson, who is also the original
  395. author of Tomcat. Ant was there to build Tomcat, nothing
  396. else.</p>
  397. <p>Soon thereafter, several open source Java projects realized
  398. that Ant could solve the problems they had with Makefiles.
  399. Starting with the projects hosted at Jakarta and the old Java
  400. Apache project, Ant spread like a virus and is now the build
  401. tool of choice for a lot of projects.</p>
  402. <p>In January 2000, Ant was moved to a separate CVS module and
  403. was promoted to a project of its own, independent of
  404. Tomcat, and became Apache Ant.</p>
  405. <p>The first version of Ant that was exposed to a larger audience
  406. was the one that shipped with Tomcat's 3.1 release on 19 April
  407. 2000. This version has later been referred to as Ant
  408. 0.3.1.</p>
  409. <p>The first official release of Ant as a stand-alone product was
  410. Ant 1.1, released on 19 July 2000. The complete release
  411. history:</p>
  412. <table class="ForrestTable" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="4">
  413. <tr>
  414. <th colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  415. valign="top" align="left">
  416. Ant Version
  417. </th>
  418. <th colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  419. valign="top" align="left">
  420. Release Date
  421. </th>
  422. </tr>
  423. <tr>
  424. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  425. valign="top" align="left">
  426. 1.1
  427. </td>
  428. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  429. valign="top" align="left">
  430. 19 July 2000
  431. </td>
  432. </tr>
  433. <tr>
  434. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  435. valign="top" align="left">
  436. 1.2
  437. </td>
  438. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  439. valign="top" align="left">
  440. 24 October 2000
  441. </td>
  442. </tr>
  443. <tr>
  444. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  445. valign="top" align="left">
  446. 1.3
  447. </td>
  448. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  449. valign="top" align="left">
  450. 3 March 2001
  451. </td>
  452. </tr>
  453. <tr>
  454. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  455. valign="top" align="left">
  456. 1.4
  457. </td>
  458. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  459. valign="top" align="left">
  460. 3 September 2001
  461. </td>
  462. </tr>
  463. <tr>
  464. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  465. valign="top" align="left">
  466. 1.4.1
  467. </td>
  468. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  469. valign="top" align="left">
  470. 11 October 2001
  471. </td>
  472. </tr>
  473. <tr>
  474. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  475. valign="top" align="left">
  476. 1.5
  477. </td>
  478. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  479. valign="top" align="left">
  480. 10 July 2002
  481. </td>
  482. </tr>
  483. <tr>
  484. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  485. valign="top" align="left">
  486. 1.5.1
  487. </td>
  488. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  489. valign="top" align="left">
  490. 3 October 2002
  491. </td>
  492. </tr>
  493. <tr>
  494. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  495. valign="top" align="left">
  496. 1.5.2
  497. </td>
  498. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  499. valign="top" align="left">
  500. 3 March 2003
  501. </td>
  502. </tr>
  503. <tr>
  504. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  505. valign="top" align="left">
  506. 1.5.3
  507. </td>
  508. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  509. valign="top" align="left">
  510. 9 April 2003
  511. </td>
  512. </tr>
  513. <tr>
  514. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  515. valign="top" align="left">
  516. 1.5.4
  517. </td>
  518. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  519. valign="top" align="left">
  520. 12 August 2003
  521. </td>
  522. </tr>
  523. <tr>
  524. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  525. valign="top" align="left">
  526. 1.6.0
  527. </td>
  528. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  529. valign="top" align="left">
  530. 18 December 2003
  531. </td>
  532. </tr>
  533. <tr>
  534. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  535. valign="top" align="left">
  536. 1.6.1
  537. </td>
  538. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  539. valign="top" align="left">
  540. 12 February 2004
  541. </td>
  542. </tr>
  543. </table>
  544. <p class="faq">
  545. <a name="no-gnu-tar"></a>
  546. I get checksum errors when I try to extract the
  547. <code>tar.gz</code> distribution file. Why?
  548. </p>
  549. <p>Ant's distribution contains file names that are longer
  550. than 100 characters, which is not supported by the standard
  551. tar file format. Several different implementations of tar use
  552. different and incompatible ways to work around this
  553. restriction.</p>
  554. <p>Ant's &lt;tar&gt; task can create tar archives that use
  555. the GNU tar extension, and this has been used when putting
  556. together the distribution. If you are using a different
  557. version of tar (for example, the one shipping with Solaris),
  558. you cannot use it to extract the archive.</p>
  559. <p>The solution is to either install GNU tar, which can be
  560. found <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html">here</a>,
  561. or use the zip archive instead (you can extract it using
  562. <code>jar xf</code>).</p>
  563. <p class="faq">
  564. <a name="adding-external-tasks"></a>
  565. How do I add an external task that I've written to the
  566. page "External Tools and Task"?
  567. </p>
  568. <p>Join and post a message to the dev or user mailing
  569. list (one list is enough), including the following
  570. information:</p>
  571. <ul>
  572. <li>the name of the task/tool</li>
  573. <li>a short description of the task/tool</li>
  574. <li>a Compatibility: entry stating with which version(s) of
  575. Ant the tool/task is compatible to</li>
  576. <li>a URL: entry linking to the main page of the tool/task</li>
  577. <li>a Contact: entry containing the email address or the URL
  578. of a webpage for the person or list to contact for issues
  579. related to the tool/task. <strong>Note that we'll add a
  580. link on the page, so any email address added there is not
  581. obfuscated and can (and probably will) be abused by robots
  582. harvesting websites for addresses to spam.</strong></li>
  583. <li>a License: entry containing the type of license for the
  584. tool/task</li>
  585. </ul>
  586. <p>The preferred format for this information is a patch to <a href="http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/~checkout~/ant/xdocs/external.xml">this</a>
  587. document.</p>
  588. <p class="faq">
  589. <a name="passing-cli-args"></a>
  590. How do I pass parameters from the command line to my
  591. build file?
  592. </p>
  593. <p>Use properties. Using <code>ant
  594. -D<em>name</em>=<em>value</em></code> lets you define values for
  595. properties on the Ant command line. These properties can then be
  596. used within your build file as
  597. any normal property: <code>${<em>name</em>}</code> will put in
  598. <code><em>value</em></code>.</p>
  599. <p class="faq">
  600. <a name="jikes-switches"></a>
  601. How can I use Jikes-specific command-line
  602. switches?
  603. </p>
  604. <p>A couple of switches are supported via "magic"
  605. properties:</p>
  606. <table class="ForrestTable" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="4">
  607. <tr>
  608. <th colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  609. valign="top" align="left">
  610. switch
  611. </th>
  612. <th colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  613. valign="top" align="left">
  614. property
  615. </th>
  616. <th colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  617. valign="top" align="left">
  618. default
  619. </th>
  620. </tr>
  621. <tr>
  622. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  623. valign="top" align="left">
  624. +E
  625. </td>
  626. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  627. valign="top" align="left">
  628. build.compiler.emacs
  629. </td>
  630. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  631. valign="top" align="left">
  632. false == not set
  633. </td>
  634. </tr>
  635. <tr>
  636. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  637. valign="top" align="left">
  638. +P
  639. </td>
  640. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  641. valign="top" align="left">
  642. build.compiler.pedantic
  643. </td>
  644. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  645. valign="top" align="left">
  646. false == not set
  647. </td>
  648. </tr>
  649. <tr>
  650. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  651. valign="top" align="left">
  652. +F
  653. </td>
  654. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  655. valign="top" align="left">
  656. build.compiler.fulldepend
  657. </td>
  658. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  659. valign="top" align="left">
  660. false == not set
  661. </td>
  662. </tr>
  663. <tr>
  664. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  665. valign="top" align="left">
  666. <strong>(Only for Ant &lt; 1.4; replaced by the
  667. <code><strong>nowarn</strong></code>
  668. attribute of the <code><strong>&lt;javac&gt;</strong></code>
  669. task after that.)</strong><br />-nowarn
  670. </td>
  671. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  672. valign="top" align="left">
  673. build.compiler.warnings
  674. </td>
  675. <td colspan="1" rowspan="1"
  676. valign="top" align="left">
  677. true == not set
  678. </td>
  679. </tr>
  680. </table>
  681. <p>With Ant &gt;= 1.5, you can also use nested
  682. <code>&lt;compilerarg&gt;</code> elements with the
  683. <code>&lt;javac&gt;</code> task.</p>
  684. <p class="faq">
  685. <a name="shell-redirect-1"></a>
  686. How do I include a &lt; character in my command-line arguments?
  687. </p>
  688. <p>The short answer is "Use: <code>&amp;lt;</code>".</p>
  689. <p>The long answer is that this probably won't do what you
  690. want anyway (see <a href="#shell-redirect-2">the next
  691. section</a>).</p>
  692. <p class="faq">
  693. <a name="shell-redirect-2"></a>
  694. How do I redirect standard input or standard output
  695. in the <code>&lt;exec&gt;</code> task?
  696. </p>
  697. <p>Say you want to redirect the standard output stream of the
  698. <code>m4</code> command to write to a file, something
  699. like:</p>
  700. <pre class="code">
  701. shell-prompt&gt; m4 foo.m4 &gt; foo
  702. </pre>
  703. <p>and try to translate it into</p>
  704. <pre class="code">
  705. &lt;exec executable=&quot;m4&quot;&gt;
  706. &lt;arg value=&quot;foo.m4&quot;/&gt;
  707. &lt;arg value=&quot;&amp;gt;&quot;/&gt;
  708. &lt;arg value=&quot;foo&quot;/&gt;
  709. &lt;/exec&gt;
  710. </pre>
  711. <p>This will not do what you expect. The output redirection is
  712. performed by your shell, not the command itself, so this
  713. should read:</p>
  714. <pre class="code">
  715. &lt;exec executable=&quot;/bin/sh&quot;&gt;
  716. &lt;arg value=&quot;-c&quot; /&gt;
  717. &lt;arg value=&quot;m4 foo.m4 &amp;gt; foo&quot; /&gt;
  718. &lt;/exec&gt;
  719. </pre>
  720. <p>Note that you must use the <code>value</code> attribute of
  721. <code>&lt;arg&gt;</code> in the last element, in order to have
  722. the command passed as a single, quoted argument. Alternatively,
  723. you can use:</p>
  724. <pre class="code">
  725. &lt;exec executable=&quot;/bin/sh&quot;&gt;
  726. &lt;arg line='-c &quot;m4 foo.m4 &amp;gt; foo&quot;'/&gt;
  727. &lt;/exec&gt;
  728. </pre>
  729. <p>Note the double-quotes nested inside the single-quotes.</p>
  730. <p class="faq">
  731. <a name="batch-shell-execute"></a>
  732. How do I execute a batch file or shell script from Ant?
  733. </p>
  734. <p>On native Unix systems, you should be able to run shell scripts
  735. directly. On systems running a Unix-type shell (for example, Cygwin
  736. on Windows) execute the (command) shell instead - <code>cmd</code>
  737. for batch files, <code>sh</code> for shell scripts - then pass the
  738. batch file or shell script (plus any arguments to the script)
  739. as a single command, using the <code>/c</code> or
  740. <code>-c</code> switch, respectively. See
  741. <a href="#shell-redirect-2">the above section</a>
  742. for example <code>&lt;exec&gt;</code> tasks
  743. executing <code>sh</code>. For batch files, use something like:</p>
  744. <pre class="code">
  745. &lt;exec dir=&quot;.&quot; executable=&quot;cmd&quot; os=&quot;Windows NT&quot;&gt;
  746. &lt;arg line=&quot;/c test.bat&quot;/&gt;
  747. &lt;/exec&gt;
  748. </pre>
  749. <p class="faq">
  750. <a name="multi-conditions"></a>
  751. I want to execute a particular target only if
  752. multiple conditions are true.
  753. </p>
  754. <p>There are actually several answers to this question.</p>
  755. <p>If you have only one set and one unset property to test,
  756. you can specify both an <code>if</code> and an <code>unless</code>
  757. attribute for the target, and they will act as if they
  758. are "anded" together.</p>
  759. <p>If you are using a version of Ant 1.3 or earlier, the
  760. way to work with all other cases is to chain targets together
  761. to determine the specific state you want to test for.</p>
  762. <p>To see how this works, assume you have three properties:
  763. <code>prop1</code>, <code>prop2</code>, and <code>prop3</code>.
  764. You want to test that <code>prop1</code> and <code>prop2</code>
  765. are set, and that <code>prop3</code> is not. If the condition
  766. holds true you want to echo "yes".</p>
  767. <p>Here is the implementation in Ant 1.3 and earlier:</p>
  768. <pre class="code">
  769. &lt;target name=&quot;cond&quot; depends=&quot;cond-if&quot;/&gt;
  770. &lt;target name=&quot;cond-if&quot; if=&quot;prop1&quot;&gt;
  771. &lt;antcall target=&quot;cond-if-2&quot;/&gt;
  772. &lt;/target&gt;
  773. &lt;target name=&quot;cond-if-2&quot; if=&quot;prop2&quot;&gt;
  774. &lt;antcall target=&quot;cond-if-3&quot;/&gt;
  775. &lt;/target&gt;
  776. &lt;target name=&quot;cond-if-3&quot; unless=&quot;prop3&quot;&gt;
  777. &lt;echo message=&quot;yes&quot;/&gt;
  778. &lt;/target&gt;
  779. </pre>
  780. <p>Note: <code>&lt;antcall&gt;</code> tasks do <em>not</em> pass
  781. property changes back up to the environment they were called
  782. from, so you would'nt be able to, for example, set a
  783. <code>result</code> property in the <code>cond-if-3</code> target,
  784. then do
  785. <code>&lt;echo message="result is ${result}"/&gt;</code>
  786. in the <code>cond</code> target.</p>
  787. <p>Starting with Ant 1.4, you can use the
  788. <code>&lt;condition&gt;</code> task.</p>
  789. <pre class="code">
  790. &lt;target name=&quot;cond&quot; depends=&quot;cond-if,cond-else&quot;/&gt;
  791. &lt;target name=&quot;check-cond&quot;&gt;
  792. &lt;condition property=&quot;cond-is-true&quot;&gt;
  793. &lt;and&gt;
  794. &lt;not&gt;
  795. &lt;equals arg1=&quot;${prop1}&quot; arg2=&quot;$${prop1}&quot; /&gt;
  796. &lt;/not&gt;
  797. &lt;not&gt;
  798. &lt;equals arg1=&quot;${prop2}&quot; arg2=&quot;$${prop2}&quot; /&gt;
  799. &lt;/not&gt;
  800. &lt;equals arg1=&quot;${prop3}&quot; arg2=&quot;$${prop3}&quot; /&gt;
  801. &lt;/and&gt;
  802. &lt;/condition&gt;
  803. &lt;/target&gt;
  804. &lt;target name=&quot;cond-if&quot; depends=&quot;check-cond&quot; if=&quot;cond-is-true&quot;&gt;
  805. &lt;echo message=&quot;yes&quot;/&gt;
  806. &lt;/target&gt;
  807. &lt;target name=&quot;cond-else&quot; depends=&quot;check-cond&quot; unless=&quot;cond-is-true&quot;&gt;
  808. &lt;echo message=&quot;no&quot;/&gt;
  809. &lt;/target&gt;
  810. </pre>
  811. <p>This version takes advantage of two things:</p>
  812. <ul>
  813. <li>If a property <code>a</code> has not been set,
  814. <code>${a}</code> will evaluate to <code>${a}</code>.</li>
  815. <li>To get a literal <code>$</code> in Ant, you have to
  816. escape it with another <code>$</code> - this will also break
  817. the special treatment of the <code>${</code> sequence.</li>
  818. </ul>
  819. <p>Because testing for a literal <code>${property}</code> string
  820. isn't all that readable or easy to understand,
  821. post-1.4.1 Ant introduces the <code>&lt;isset&gt;</code> element
  822. to the <code>&lt;condition&gt;</code> task.</p>
  823. <p>Here is the previous example done using
  824. <code>&lt;isset&gt;</code>:</p>
  825. <pre class="code">
  826. &lt;target name=&quot;check-cond&quot;&gt;
  827. &lt;condition property=&quot;cond-is-true&quot;&gt;
  828. &lt;and&gt;
  829. &lt;isset property=&quot;prop1&quot;/&gt;
  830. &lt;isset property=&quot;prop2&quot;/&gt;
  831. &lt;not&gt;
  832. &lt;isset property=&quot;prop3&quot;/&gt;
  833. &lt;/not&gt;
  834. &lt;/and&gt;
  835. &lt;/condition&gt;
  836. &lt;/target&gt;
  837. </pre>
  838. <p>The last option is to use a scripting language to set the
  839. properties. This can be particularly handy when you need much
  840. finer control than the simple conditions shown here but, of
  841. course, comes with the overhead of adding JAR files to support
  842. the language, to say nothing of the added maintenance in requiring
  843. two languages to implement a single system. See the
  844. <a href="manual/OptionalTasks/script.html">
  845. <code>&lt;script&gt;</code> task documentation</a> for more
  846. details.</p>
  847. <p class="faq">
  848. <a name="encoding"></a>
  849. How can I include national characters like German
  850. umlauts in my build file?
  851. </p>
  852. <p>You need to tell the XML parser which character encoding
  853. your build file uses, this is done inside the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006#sec-prolog-dtd">XML
  854. declaration</a>.</p>
  855. <p>By default the parser assumes you are using the UTF-8
  856. encoding instead of your platform's default. For most Western
  857. European countries you should set the encoding to
  858. <code>ISO-8859-1</code>. To do so, make the very first line
  859. of you build file read like</p>
  860. <pre class="code">
  861. &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;ISO-8859-1&quot; ?&gt;
  862. </pre>
  863. <p class="faq">
  864. <a name="use-zip-instead-of-jar"></a>
  865. How do I use <code>jar</code>'s <code>M</code> switch?
  866. I don't want a MANIFEST.
  867. </p>
  868. <p>A JAR archive is a ZIP file, so if you don't want a
  869. MANIFEST you can simply use <code>&lt;zip&gt;</code>.</p>
  870. <p>If your file names contain national characters you should
  871. know that Sun's <code>jar</code> utility like Ant's
  872. <code>&lt;jar&gt;</code> uses UFT8 to encode their names while
  873. <code>&lt;zip&gt;</code> uses your platforms default encoding.
  874. Use the encoding attribute of <code>&lt;zip&gt;</code> if
  875. necessary.</p>
  876. <p class="faq">
  877. <a name="propertyvalue-as-name-for-property"></a>
  878. How can I do something like <code>&lt;property name="prop"
  879. value="${${anotherprop}}"/&gt;</code> (double expanding the property)?
  880. </p>
  881. <p>Without any external help you can not.</p>
  882. <p>With &lt;script/&gt;, which needs external libraries, you can do</p>
  883. <pre class="code">
  884. &lt;script language=&quot;javascript&quot;&gt;
  885. propname = project.getProperty(&quot;anotherprop&quot;);
  886. project.setNewProperty(&quot;prop&quot;, propname);
  887. &lt;/script&gt;
  888. </pre>
  889. <p>With AntContrib (external task library) you can do <code>
  890. &lt;propertycopy name="prop" from="${anotherprop}"/&gt;</code>.</p>
  891. <p class="faq">
  892. <a name="always-recompiles"></a>
  893. Why does Ant always recompile all my Java files?
  894. </p>
  895. <p>In order to find out which files should be compiled, Ant
  896. compares the timestamps of the source files to those of the
  897. resulting <code>.class</code> files. Opening all source files
  898. to find out which package they belong to would be very
  899. inefficient. Instead, Ant expects you to place your
  900. source files in a directory hierarchy that mirrors your
  901. package hierarchy and to point Ant to the root of this
  902. directory tree with the <code>srcdir</code> attribute.</p>
  903. <p>Say you have <code>&lt;javac srcdir="src"
  904. destdir="dest"/&gt;</code>. If Ant finds a file
  905. <code>src/a/b/C.java</code>, it expects it to be in package
  906. <code>a.b</code> so that the resulting <code>.class</code>
  907. file is going to be <code>dest/a/b/C.class</code>.</p>
  908. <p>If your source-tree directory structure does not match your
  909. package structure, Ant's heuristic won't work, and
  910. it will recompile classes that are up-to-date. Ant is not the
  911. only tool that expects a source-tree layout like this.</p>
  912. <p>If you have Java source files that aren't declared to
  913. be part of any package, you can still use the <code>&lt;javac&gt;</code>
  914. task to compile these files correctly - just set the
  915. <code>srcdir</code> and <code>destdir</code> attributes to
  916. the actual directory the source
  917. files live in and the directory the class files should go into,
  918. respectively.</p>
  919. <p class="faq">
  920. <a name="defaultexcludes"></a>
  921. I've used a <code>&lt;delete&gt;</code> task to
  922. delete unwanted SourceSafe control files (CVS files, editor
  923. backup files, etc.), but it doesn't seem to work; the files
  924. never get deleted. What's wrong?
  925. </p>
  926. <p>This is probably happening because, by default, Ant excludes
  927. SourceSafe control files (<code>vssver.scc</code>) and certain other
  928. files from FileSets.</p>
  929. <p>Here's what you probably did:</p>
  930. <pre class="code">
  931. &lt;delete&gt;
  932. &lt;fileset dir=&quot;${build.src}&quot; includes=&quot;**/vssver.scc&quot;/&gt;
  933. &lt;/delete&gt;
  934. </pre>
  935. <p>You need to switch off the default exclusions,
  936. and it will work:</p>
  937. <pre class="code">
  938. &lt;delete&gt;
  939. &lt;fileset dir=&quot;${build.src}&quot; includes=&quot;**/vssver.scc&quot;
  940. defaultexcludes=&quot;no&quot;/&gt;
  941. &lt;/delete&gt;
  942. </pre>
  943. <p>For a complete listing of the patterns that are excluded
  944. by default, see <a href="manual/dirtasks.html#defaultexcludes">the user
  945. manual</a>.</p>
  946. <p class="faq">
  947. <a name="stop-dependency"></a>
  948. I have a target I want to skip if a property is set,
  949. so I have <code>unless="property"</code> as an attribute
  950. of the target, but all the targets this target
  951. depends on are still executed. Why?
  952. </p>
  953. <p>The list of dependencies is generated by Ant before any of the
  954. targets are run. This allows dependent targets, such as an
  955. <code>init</code> target, to set properties that can control the
  956. execution of the targets higher in the dependency graph. This
  957. is a good thing.</p>
  958. <p>However, when your dependencies break down the
  959. higher-level task
  960. into several smaller steps, this behaviour becomes
  961. counter-intuitive. There are a couple of solutions available:
  962. </p>
  963. <ol>
  964. <li>Put the same condition on each of the dependent targets.</li>
  965. <li>Execute the steps using <code>&lt;antcall&gt;</code>,
  966. instead of specifying them inside the <code>depends</code>
  967. attribute.</li>
  968. </ol>
  969. <p class="faq">
  970. <a name="include-order"></a>
  971. In my <code>&lt;fileset&gt;</code>, I've put in an
  972. <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code> of all files followed by an
  973. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> of just the files I want, but it
  974. isn't giving me any files at all. What's wrong?
  975. </p>
  976. <p>The order of the <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> and
  977. <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code> tags within a <code>&lt;fileset&gt;</code>
  978. is ignored when the FileSet is created. Instead, all of the
  979. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> elements are processed together,
  980. followed by all of the <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code>
  981. elements. This means that the <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code>
  982. elements only apply to the file list produced by the
  983. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> elements.</p>
  984. <p>To get the files you want, focus on just the
  985. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> patterns that would be necessary
  986. to get them. If you find you need to trim the list that the
  987. <code>&lt;include&gt;</code> elements produce, then use
  988. <code>&lt;exclude&gt;</code> elements.</p>
  989. <p class="faq">
  990. <a name="properties-not-trimmed"></a>
  991. <code>ant</code> failed to build my program via javac
  992. even when I put the needed jars in an external
  993. <code>build.properties</code> file and reference them by
  994. <code>pathelement</code> or <code>classpath refid</code>.
  995. </p>
  996. <p>When <code>ant</code> loads properties from an external
  997. file it dosn't touch the value of properties, trailing blanks
  998. will not be trimmed for example.</p>
  999. <p>If the value represents a file path, like a jar needed to
  1000. compile, the task which requires the value, javac for example
  1001. would fail to compile since it can't find the file due to
  1002. trailing spaces.</p>
  1003. <p class="faq">
  1004. <a name="winzip-lies"></a>
  1005. Ant creates WAR files with a lower-case
  1006. <code>web-inf</code> or JAR files with a lower-case
  1007. <code>meta-inf</code> directory.
  1008. </p>
  1009. <p>No it doesn't.</p>
  1010. <p>You may have seen these lower-case directory names in
  1011. WinZIP, but WinZIP is trying to be helpful (and fails). If
  1012. WinZIP encounters a filename that is all upper-case, it
  1013. assumes it has come from an old DOS box and changes the case to
  1014. all lower-case for you.</p>
  1015. <p>If you extract (or just check) the archive with jar, you
  1016. will see that the names have the correct case.</p>
  1017. <p>With WinZIP (version 8.1 at least), this can be corrected in the
  1018. configuration. In the Options/Configuration menu, in the View tab, General
  1019. section, check the "Allow all upper case files names" box. The META-INF and
  1020. WEB-INF will look correct.</p>
  1021. <p class="faq">
  1022. <a name="integration"></a>
  1023. Is Ant supported by my IDE/Editor?
  1024. </p>
  1025. <p>See the <a href="external.html#IDE and Editor Integration">section
  1026. on IDE integration</a> on our External Tools and Tasks page.</p>
  1027. <p class="faq">
  1028. <a name="emacs-mode"></a>
  1029. Why doesn't (X)Emacs/vi/MacOS X's project builder
  1030. correctly parse the error messages generated by Ant?
  1031. </p>
  1032. <p>Ant adds a "banner" with the name of the current
  1033. task in front of all logging messages - and there are no built-in
  1034. regular expressions in your editor that would account for
  1035. this.</p>
  1036. <p>You can disable this banner by invoking Ant with the
  1037. <code>-emacs</code> switch. To make Ant autodetect
  1038. Emacs' compile mode, put this into your
  1039. <code>.antrc</code> (contributed by Ville Skytt).</p>
  1040. <pre class="code">
  1041. # Detect (X)Emacs compile mode
  1042. if [ &quot;$EMACS&quot; = &quot;t&quot; ] ; then
  1043. ANT_ARGS=&quot;$ANT_ARGS -emacs&quot;
  1044. ANT_OPTS=&quot;$ANT_OPTS -Dbuild.compiler.emacs=true&quot;
  1045. fi
  1046. </pre>
  1047. <p>Alternatively, you can add the following snippet to your
  1048. <code>.emacs</code> to make Emacs understand Ant's
  1049. output.</p>
  1050. <pre class="code">
  1051. (require 'compile)
  1052. (setq compilation-error-regexp-alist
  1053. (append (list
  1054. ;; works for jikes
  1055. '(&quot;^\\s-*\\[[^]]*\\]\\s-*\\(.+\\):\\([0-9]+\\):\\([0-9]+\\):[0-9]+:[0-9]+:&quot; 1 2 3)
  1056. ;; works for javac
  1057. '(&quot;^\\s-*\\[[^]]*\\]\\s-*\\(.+\\):\\([0-9]+\\):&quot; 1 2))
  1058. compilation-error-regexp-alist))
  1059. </pre>
  1060. <p>Yet another alternative that preserves most of Ant's
  1061. formatting is to pipe Ant's output through the following Perl
  1062. script by Dirk-Willem van Gulik:</p>
  1063. <pre class="code">
  1064. #!/usr/bin/perl
  1065. #
  1066. # May 2001 dirkx@apache.org - remove any
  1067. # [foo] lines from the output; keeping
  1068. # spacing more or less there.
  1069. #
  1070. $|=1;
  1071. while(&lt;STDIN&gt;) {
  1072. if (s/^(\s+)\[(\w+)\]//) {
  1073. if ($2 ne $last) {
  1074. print &quot;$1\[$2\]&quot;;
  1075. $s = ' ' x length($2);
  1076. } else {
  1077. print &quot;$1 $s &quot;;
  1078. };
  1079. $last = $2;
  1080. };
  1081. print;
  1082. };
  1083. </pre>
  1084. <p class="faq">
  1085. <a name="dtd"></a>
  1086. Is there a DTD that I can use to validate my build
  1087. files?
  1088. </p>
  1089. <p>An incomplete DTD can be created by the
  1090. <code>&lt;antstructure&gt;</code> task - but this one
  1091. has a few problems:</p>
  1092. <ul>
  1093. <li>It doesn't know about required attributes. Only
  1094. manual tweaking of this file can help here.</li>
  1095. <li>It is not complete - if you add new tasks via
  1096. <code>&lt;taskdef&gt;</code> it won't know about it. See
  1097. <a href="http://www.sdv.fr/pages/casa/html/ant-dtd.en.html">this
  1098. page</a> by Michel Casabianca for a solution to this
  1099. problem. Note that the DTD you can download at this page
  1100. is based on Ant 0.3.1.</li>
  1101. <li>It may even be an invalid DTD. As Ant allows tasks
  1102. writers to define arbitrary elements, name collisions will
  1103. happen quite frequently - if your version of Ant contains
  1104. the optional <code>&lt;test&gt;</code> and
  1105. <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> tasks, there are two XML
  1106. elements named <code>test</code> (the task and the nested child
  1107. element of <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code>) with different attribute
  1108. lists. This problem cannot be solved; DTDs don't give a
  1109. syntax rich enough to support this.</li>
  1110. </ul>
  1111. <p class="faq">
  1112. <a name="xml-entity-include"></a>
  1113. How do I include an XML snippet in my build file?
  1114. </p>
  1115. <p>You can use XML's way of including external files and let
  1116. the parser do the job for Ant:</p>
  1117. <pre class="code">
  1118. &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
  1119. &lt;!DOCTYPE project [
  1120. &lt;!ENTITY common SYSTEM &quot;file:./common.xml&quot;&gt;
  1121. ]&gt;
  1122. &lt;project name=&quot;test&quot; default=&quot;test&quot; basedir=&quot;.&quot;&gt;
  1123. &lt;target name=&quot;setup&quot;&gt;
  1124. ...
  1125. &lt;/target&gt;
  1126. &amp;common;
  1127. ...
  1128. &lt;/project&gt;
  1129. </pre>
  1130. <p>will literally include the contents of <code>common.xml</code> where
  1131. you've placed the <code>&amp;common;</code> entity.</p>
  1132. <p>In combination with a DTD, this would look like this:</p>
  1133. <pre class="code">
  1134. &lt;!DOCTYPE project PUBLIC &quot;-//ANT//DTD project//EN&quot; &quot;file:./ant.dtd&quot; [
  1135. &lt;!ENTITY include SYSTEM &quot;file:./header.xml&quot;&gt;
  1136. ]&gt;
  1137. </pre>
  1138. <p>Starting with Ant 1.6, there is a new
  1139. <code>&lt;import&gt;</code> task that can (also) be used to
  1140. include build file fragments. Unlike the snippets used with
  1141. entity includes, the referenced files have to be complete Ant
  1142. build files, though.</p>
  1143. <p>The example above would become:</p>
  1144. <pre class="code">
  1145. &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
  1146. &lt;project name=&quot;test&quot; default=&quot;test&quot; basedir=&quot;.&quot;&gt;
  1147. &lt;target name=&quot;setup&quot;&gt;
  1148. ...
  1149. &lt;/target&gt;
  1150. &lt;import file=&quot;./common.xml&quot;/&gt;
  1151. ...
  1152. &lt;/project&gt;
  1153. </pre>
  1154. <p>Unlike entity includes, <code>&lt;import&gt;</code> will
  1155. let you use Ant properties in the file name.</p>
  1156. <p class="faq">
  1157. <a name="mail-logger"></a>
  1158. How do I send an email with the result of my build
  1159. process?
  1160. </p>
  1161. <p>If you are using a nightly build of Ant 1.5 after
  1162. 2001-12-14, you can use the built-in MailLogger:</p>
  1163. <pre class="code">
  1164. ant -logger org.apache.tools.ant.listener.MailLogger
  1165. </pre>
  1166. <p>See the <a href="http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/~checkout~/ant/docs/manual/listeners.html?content-type=text/html">Listeners
  1167. &amp; Loggers</a> documentation for details on the properties
  1168. required.</p>
  1169. <p>For older versions of Ant, you can use a custom
  1170. BuildListener that sends out an email
  1171. in the buildFinished() method. Will Glozer
  1172. &lt;will.glozer@jda.com&gt; has written such a listener based
  1173. on <a href="http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/">JavaMail</a>.
  1174. The source is:</p>
  1175. <pre class="code">
  1176. import java.io.*;
  1177. import java.util.*;
  1178. import javax.mail.*;
  1179. import javax.mail.internet.*;
  1180. import org.apache.tools.ant.*;
  1181. /**
  1182. * A simple listener that waits for a build to finish and sends an email
  1183. * of the results. The settings are stored in &quot;monitor.properties&quot; and
  1184. * are fairly self explanatory.
  1185. *
  1186. * @author Will Glozer
  1187. * @version 1.05a 09/06/2000
  1188. */
  1189. public class BuildMonitor implements BuildListener {
  1190. protected Properties props;
  1191. /**
  1192. * Create a new BuildMonitor.
  1193. */
  1194. public BuildMonitor() throws Exception {
  1195. props = new Properties();
  1196. InputStream is = getClass().getResourceAsStream(&quot;monitor.properties&quot;);
  1197. props.load(is);
  1198. is.close();
  1199. }
  1200. public void buildStarted(BuildEvent e) {
  1201. }
  1202. /**
  1203. * Determine the status of the build and the actions to follow, now that
  1204. * the build has completed.
  1205. *
  1206. * @param e Event describing the build status.
  1207. */
  1208. public void buildFinished(BuildEvent e) {
  1209. Throwable th = e.getException();
  1210. String status = (th != null) ? &quot;failed&quot; : &quot;succeeded&quot;;
  1211. try {
  1212. String key = &quot;build.&quot; + status;
  1213. if (props.getProperty(key + &quot;.notify&quot;).equalsIgnoreCase(&quot;false&quot;)) {
  1214. return;
  1215. }
  1216. Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, null);
  1217. MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
  1218. message.addRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, parseAddresses(
  1219. props.getProperty(key + &quot;.email.to&quot;)));
  1220. message.setSubject(props.getProperty(key + &quot;.email.subject&quot;));
  1221. BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(
  1222. props.getProperty(&quot;build.log&quot;)));
  1223. StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
  1224. String line = br.readLine();
  1225. while (line != null) {
  1226. sw.write(line);
  1227. sw.write(&quot;\n&quot;);
  1228. line = br.readLine();
  1229. }
  1230. br.close();
  1231. message.setText(sw.toString(), &quot;UTF-8&quot;);
  1232. sw.close();
  1233. Transport transport = session.getTransport();
  1234. transport.connect();
  1235. transport.send(message);
  1236. transport.close();
  1237. } catch (Exception ex) {
  1238. System.out.println(&quot;BuildMonitor failed to send email!&quot;);
  1239. ex.printStackTrace();
  1240. }
  1241. }
  1242. /**
  1243. * Parse a comma separated list of internet email addresses.
  1244. *
  1245. * @param s The list of addresses.
  1246. * @return Array of Addresses.
  1247. */
  1248. protected Address[] parseAddresses(String s) throws Exception {
  1249. StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(s, &quot;,&quot;);
  1250. Address[] addrs = new Address[st.countTokens()];
  1251. for (int i = 0; i &lt; addrs.length; i++) {
  1252. addrs[i] = new InternetAddress(st.nextToken());
  1253. }
  1254. return addrs;
  1255. }
  1256. public void messageLogged(BuildEvent e) {
  1257. }
  1258. public void targetStarted(BuildEvent e) {
  1259. }
  1260. public void targetFinished(BuildEvent e) {
  1261. }
  1262. public void taskStarted(BuildEvent e) {
  1263. }
  1264. public void taskFinished(BuildEvent e) {
  1265. }
  1266. }
  1267. </pre>
  1268. <p>With a <code>monitor.properties</code> like this:</p>
  1269. <pre class="code">
  1270. # configuration for build monitor
  1271. mail.transport.protocol=smtp
  1272. mail.smtp.host=&lt;host&gt;
  1273. mail.from=Will Glozer &lt;will.glozer@jda.com&gt;
  1274. build.log=build.log
  1275. build.failed.notify=true
  1276. build.failed.email.to=will.glozer@jda.com
  1277. build.failed.email.subject=Nightly build failed!
  1278. build.succeeded.notify=true
  1279. build.succeeded.email.to=will.glozer@jda.com
  1280. build.succeeded.email.subject=Nightly build succeeded!
  1281. </pre>
  1282. <p><code>monitor.properties</code> should be placed right next
  1283. to your compiled <code>BuildMonitor.class</code>. To use it,
  1284. invoke Ant like:</p>
  1285. <pre class="code">
  1286. ant -listener BuildMonitor -logfile build.log
  1287. </pre>
  1288. <p>Make sure that <code>mail.jar</code> from JavaMail and
  1289. <code>activation.jar</code> from the
  1290. <a href="http://java.sun.com/products/javabeans/glasgow/jaf.html">Java
  1291. Beans Activation Framework</a> are in your <code>CLASSPATH</code>.</p>
  1292. <p class="faq">
  1293. <a name="listener-properties"></a>
  1294. How do I get at the properties that Ant was running
  1295. with from inside BuildListener?
  1296. </p>
  1297. <p>You can get at a hashtable with all the properties that Ant
  1298. has been using through the BuildEvent parameter. For
  1299. example:</p>
  1300. <pre class="code">
  1301. public void buildFinished(BuildEvent e) {
  1302. Hashtable table = e.getProject().getProperties();
  1303. String buildpath = (String)table.get(&quot;build.path&quot;);
  1304. ...
  1305. }
  1306. </pre>
  1307. <p>This is more accurate than just reading the same property
  1308. files that your project does, since it will give the correct
  1309. results for properties that were specified on the Ant command line.</p>
  1310. <p class="faq">
  1311. <a name="remove-cr"></a>
  1312. &lt;chmod&gt; or &lt;exec&gt; doesn't work in Ant
  1313. 1.3 on Unix
  1314. </p>
  1315. <p>The <code>antRun</code> script in <code>ANT_HOME/bin</code>
  1316. has DOS instead of Unix line endings; you must remove the
  1317. carriage-return characters from this file. This can be done by
  1318. using Ant's <code>&lt;fixcrlf&gt;</code> task
  1319. or something like:</p>
  1320. <pre class="code">
  1321. tr -d '\r' &lt; $ANT_HOME/bin/antRun &gt; /tmp/foo
  1322. mv /tmp/foo $ANT_HOME/bin/antRun
  1323. </pre>
  1324. <p class="faq">
  1325. <a name="javadoc-cannot-execute"></a>
  1326. JavaDoc failed: java.io.IOException: javadoc: cannot execute
  1327. </p>
  1328. <p>There is a bug in the Solaris reference implementation of
  1329. the JDK (see <a href="http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4230399.html">http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4230399.html</a>).
  1330. This also appears to be true under Linux. Moving the JDK to
  1331. the front of the PATH fixes the problem.</p>
  1332. <p class="faq">
  1333. <a name="delegating-classloader"></a>
  1334. &lt;style&gt; or &lt;junit&gt; ignores my
  1335. &lt;classpath&gt;
  1336. </p>
  1337. <p>These tasks don't ignore your classpath setting, you
  1338. are facing a common problem with delegating classloaders.</p>
  1339. <p>First of all let's state that Ant adds all
  1340. <code>.jar</code> files from <code>ANT_HOME/lib</code> to
  1341. <code>CLASSPATH</code>, therefore "in
  1342. <code>CLASSPATH</code>" shall mean "either in your
  1343. <code>CLASSPATH</code> environment variable or
  1344. <code>ANT_HOME/lib</code>" for the rest of this
  1345. answer.</p>
  1346. <p>Technically the sentence above isn't true for Ant 1.6
  1347. and later anymore, but the result is the same. For the sake
  1348. of this discussion, <code>CLASSPATH</code> and
  1349. <code>ANT_HOME/lib</code> are identical.</p>
  1350. <p>This question collects a common type of problem: A task
  1351. needs an external library and it has a nested classpath
  1352. element so that you can point it to this external library, but
  1353. that doesn't work unless you put the external library into the
  1354. <code>CLASSPATH</code>.</p>
  1355. <p>The root of the problem is that the class that needs the
  1356. external library is on the <code>CLASSPATH</code>.</p>
  1357. <p>When you specify a nested <code>&lt;classpath&gt;</code> in
  1358. Ant, Ant creates a new class loader that uses the path you
  1359. have specified. It then tries to load additional classes from
  1360. this classloader.</p>
  1361. <p>In most cases - for example the two cases above - Ant
  1362. doesn't load the external library directly, it is the loaded
  1363. class that does so.</p>
  1364. <p>In the case of <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> it is the task
  1365. implementation itself and in the case of
  1366. <code>&lt;style&gt;</code> it is the implementation of the
  1367. <code>org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.XSLTLiaison</code>
  1368. class.</p>
  1369. <p>Ant's class loader implementation uses Java's
  1370. delegation model, see <a href="http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/api/java/lang/ClassLoader.html">http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/api/java/lang/ClassLoader.html</a>
  1371. the paragraph</p>
  1372. <blockquote>The <code>ClassLoader</code> class uses a
  1373. delegation model to search for classes and resources. Each
  1374. instance of <code>ClassLoader</code> has an associated parent
  1375. class loader. When called upon to find a class or resource, a
  1376. <code>ClassLoader</code> instance will delegate the search for
  1377. the class or resource to its parent class loader before
  1378. attempting to find the class or resource itself. The virtual
  1379. machine's built-in class loader, called the bootstrap
  1380. class loader, does not itself have a parent but may serve as
  1381. the parent of a <code>ClassLoader</code>
  1382. instance.</blockquote>
  1383. <p>This means, Ant's class loader will consult the
  1384. bootstrap class loader first, which tries to load classes from
  1385. <code>CLASSPATH</code>. The bootstrap class loader
  1386. doesn't know anything about Ant's class loader or
  1387. even the path you have specified.</p>
  1388. <p>If the bootstrap class loader can load the class Ant has
  1389. asked it to load, this class will try to load the external
  1390. library from <code>CLASSPATH</code> as well - it doesn't
  1391. know anything else - and will not find it unless the library
  1392. is in <code>CLASSPATH</code> as well.</p>
  1393. <p>To solve this, you have two major options:</p>
  1394. <ol>
  1395. <li>put all external libraries you need in
  1396. <code>CLASSPATH</code> as well this is not what you want,
  1397. otherwise you wouldn't have found this FAQ entry.</li>
  1398. <li>remove the class that loads the external library from
  1399. the <code>CLASSPATH</code>.</li>
  1400. </ol>
  1401. <p><strong>Using The Second Option with Ant 1.5.4 and
  1402. Earlier:</strong></p>
  1403. <p>The easiest way to do this is to remove
  1404. <code>optional.jar</code> from <code>ANT_HOME/lib</code>. If
  1405. you do so, you will have to <code>&lt;taskdef&gt;</code> all
  1406. optional tasks and use nested <code>&lt;classpath&gt;</code>
  1407. elements in the <code>&lt;taskdef&gt;</code> tasks that point
  1408. to the new location of <code>optional.jar</code>. Also,
  1409. don't forget to add the new location of
  1410. <code>optional.jar</code> to the
  1411. <code>&lt;classpath&gt;</code> of your
  1412. <code>&lt;style&gt;</code> or <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code>
  1413. task.</p>
  1414. <p>If you want to avoid to <code>&lt;taskdef&gt;</code> all
  1415. optional tasks you need, the only other option is to remove
  1416. the classes that should not be loaded via the bootstrap class
  1417. loader from <code>optional.jar</code> and put them into a
  1418. separate archive. Add this separate archive to the
  1419. <code>&lt;classpath&gt;</code> of your
  1420. <code>&lt;style&gt;</code> or <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> task
  1421. - and make sure the separate archive is not in
  1422. <code>CLASSPATH</code>.</p>
  1423. <p>In the case of <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> you'd have
  1424. to remove all classes that are in the
  1425. <code>org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/optional/junit</code>
  1426. directory, in the <code>&lt;style&gt;</code> case it is one of
  1427. the <code>*Liaison</code> classes in
  1428. <code>org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/optional</code>.</p>
  1429. <p><strong>Using The Second Option with Ant 1.6 and
  1430. later:</strong></p>
  1431. <p>In Ant 1.6 <code>optional.jar</code> has been split into
  1432. multiple jars, each one containing classes with the same
  1433. dependencies on external libraries. You can move the
  1434. "offending" jar out of ANT_HOME/lib. For the
  1435. <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> task it would be
  1436. <code>ant-junit.jar</code> and for <code>&lt;style&gt;</code>
  1437. it would be <code>ant-trax.jar</code>,
  1438. <code>ant-xalan1.jar</code> or <code>ant-xslp.jar</code> -
  1439. depending on the processor you use.</p>
  1440. <p>If you use the option to break up <code>optional.jar</code>
  1441. for <code>&lt;junit&gt;</code> or remove
  1442. <code>ant-junit.jar</code>, you still have to use a
  1443. <code>&lt;taskdef&gt;</code> with a nested
  1444. <code>&lt;classpath&gt;</code> to define the junit task.</p>
  1445. <p class="faq">
  1446. <a name="winxp-jdk14-ant14"></a>
  1447. When running Ant 1.4 on Windows XP and JDK 1.4, I get
  1448. various errors when trying to <code>&lt;exec&gt;</code>, fork
  1449. <code>&lt;java&gt;</code> or access environment
  1450. variables.
  1451. </p>
  1452. <p>Ant &lt; 1.5 doesn't recognize Windows XP as a flavor
  1453. of Windows that runs <code>CMD.EXE</code> instead of
  1454. <code>COMMAND.COM</code>. JDK 1.3 will tell Ant that Windows
  1455. XP is Windows 2000 so the problem doesn't show up
  1456. there.</p>
  1457. <p>Apart from upgrading to Ant 1.5 or better, setting the
  1458. environment variable <code>ANT_OPTS</code> to
  1459. <code>-Dos.name=Windows_NT</code> prior to invoking Ant has
  1460. been confirmed as a workaround.</p>
  1461. <p class="faq">
  1462. <a name="1.5-cygwin-sh"></a>
  1463. The <code>ant</code> wrapper script of Ant 1.5 fails
  1464. for Cygwin if <code>ANT_HOME</code> is set to a Windows style
  1465. path.
  1466. </p>
  1467. <p>This problem has been reported only hours after Ant 1.5 has
  1468. been released, see <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10664">Bug
  1469. 10664</a> and all its duplicates.</p>
  1470. <p>A fixed version of the wrapper script can be found <a href="http://ant.apache.org/old-releases/v1.5/errata/">here</a>.
  1471. Simply replace your script with this version.</p>
  1472. <p class="faq">
  1473. <a name="1.5.2-zip-broken"></a>
  1474. <code>&lt;zip&gt;</code> is broken in Ant 1.5.2.
  1475. </p>
  1476. <p>Yes, it is.</p>
  1477. <p>The problem reported by most people - see <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17648">Bug
  1478. 17648</a> and all its duplicates - is that Ant creates
  1479. archives that a partially unreadable by WinZIP. Luckily
  1480. <code>jar</code> deals with the archives and so the generated
  1481. jars/wars/ears will most likely work for you anyway.</p>
  1482. <p>There are additional problems, see bugs <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17780">Bug
  1483. 17780</a>, <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17871">Bug
  1484. 17871</a> and <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18403">Bug
  1485. 18403</a>. All of them are supposed to be fixed with Ant
  1486. 1.5.3 (and only 18403 should exist in 1.5.3beta1).</p>
  1487. </div>
  1488. </div>
  1489. <p class="copyright">
  1490. Copyright &copy; 2000-2004&nbsp;The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
  1491. <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"><!--
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