Best Apache Ant Template [closed]

Question

Every time I create a new project I copy the last project's ant file to the new one and make the appropriate changes (trying at the same time to make it more flexible for the next project). But since I didn't really thought about it at the beginning, the file started to look really ugly.

Do you have an Ant template that can be easily ported in a new project? Any tips/sites for making one?

Thank you.

Answer 1

An alternative to making a template is to evolve one by gradually generalising your current project's Ant script so that there are fewer changes to make the next time you copy it for use on a new project. There are several things you can do.

Use ${ant.project.name} in file names, so you only have to mention your application name in the project element. For example, if you generate myapp.jar:

<project name="myapp">
   ...
   <target name="jar">
      ...
      <jar jarfile="${ant.project.name}.jar" ...

Structure your source directory structure so that you can package your build by copying whole directories, rather than naming individual files. For example, if you are copying JAR files to a web application archive, do something like:

<copy todir="${war}/WEB-INF/lib" flatten="true">
   <fileset dir="lib" includes="**/*.jar">
</copy>

Use properties files for machine-specific and project-specific build file properties.

<!-- Machine-specific property over-rides -->
<property file="/etc/ant/build.properties" />

<!-- Project-specific property over-rides -->
<property file="build.properties" />

<!-- Default property values, used if not specified in properties files -->
<property name="jboss.home" value="/usr/share/jboss" />
...

Note that Ant properties cannot be changed once set, so you override a value by defining a new value before the default value.

Answer 2

You can give http://import-ant.sourceforge.net/ a try. It is a set of build file snippets that can be used to create simple custom build files.