Absolute paths in Ant property file

Question

I have a property file containing absolute paths to jars etc. When using these properties they are prefixed with the basedir specified in the build file. How do I get the absolute path?

build.properties:

mylib=/lib/mylib.jar

build.xml:

<project name="myproject" basedir=".">
  <property file="build.properties"/>
  ...${mylib}...
</project>

Answer 1

Please take a look at the property task :

http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/property.html

By using the location attribute e.g. :

<property name="my.abs.path" location="my.relative.path"/>
<echo message="My abs.path is : ${my.abs.path}"/>

This will expand any relative properties to their full absolute path. Of course the path is expanded relatively to the project's basedir.