Ant Basics

COMP285 Lectures 2022-02-14

To compile our source code with Ant we need the source file:

public class Main {
	public static void main(String args[]) {
		for(int i=0;i<args.length;i++) {
			System.out.println(args[i]);
		}
	}
}

This should be placed in a folder called src to match the srcdir variable in the build file.

and an Ant build.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="firstbuild" default="compile" >
	<target name="compile">
		<javac srcdir="src" includeAntRuntime="no"/>
		<echo>compilation complete!</echo>
	</target>
</project>

This places the .class files in the src directory.

Ant will compile all the files in the src directory and sub-directories.

Ant XML

Ant expects a build file with the following hierachy:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project>
	<target>
		<task/>
	</target>
</project>

We can use the syntax of <tagname/> to make the tag self closing.

Tasks

We can reference the following link for the tasks available in Ant:

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