Apache Ant - Sample build.xml File

Sample build.xml File

Below is listed a sample build.xml file for a simple Java "Hello, world" application. It defines four targets - clean, clobber, compile and jar, each of which has an associated description. The jar target lists the compile target as a dependency. This tells Ant that before it can start the jar target it must first complete the compile target.

Within each target are the actions that Ant must take to build that target; these are performed using built-in tasks. For example, to build the compile target Ant must first create a directory called classes (Ant will only do so if it does not already exist) and then invoke the Java compiler. Therefore, the tasks used are mkdir and javac. These perform a similar task to the command-line utilities of the same name.

Another task used in this example is named jar:

This ant task has the same name as the common java command-line utility, JAR, but is really a call to the ant program's built-in jar/zip file support. This detail is not relevant to most end users, who just get the JAR they wanted, with the files they asked for.

Many Ant tasks delegate their work to external programs, either native or Java. They use Ant's own and tasks to set up the command lines, and handle all the details of mapping from information in the build file to the program's arguments -and interpreting the return value. Users can see which tasks do this (e.g. , , , ), by trying to execute the task on a system without the underlying program on the path, or without a full Java Development Kit (JDK) installed.

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