How to specify base dir then we run ant like ant -f somedir/dir/build.xml

Question

How to specify base dir then we run ant like ant -f somedir/dir/build.xml. Ant sets basedir relative to build.xml, if I specify

<project basedir="." ..>

I would like to have basedir pointed to place where Ant is executed.

Answer 1

Use -D to override the basedir property:

ant -Dbasedir=`pwd` -f path/to/build.xml

The use of pwd is a Linux-only thing, but you can always put the absolute path of the current directory there if you're on another platform.

I don't think there's a way to do this inside build.xml, short of re-executing ant with the ant task.