In what order are Ant target's "if" and "depends" evaluated?

Question

That is, will calling the following target when testSetupDone evaluates to false, execute the targets in dependency chain?

<target name="-runTestsIfTestSetupDone" if="testSetupDone" depends="-runTests" />

Answer 1

Yes, the dependencies are executed before the conditions get evaluated.

From the Ant manual:

Important: the if and unless attributes only enable or disable the target to which they are attached. They do not control whether or not targets that a conditional target depends upon get executed. In fact, they do not even get evaluated until the target is about to be executed, and all its predecessors have already run.

---

Here is an example:

<project>
  <target name="-runTests">
    <property name="testSetupDone" value="foo"/>
  </target>
  <target name="runTestsIfTestSetupDone" if="testSetupDone" depends="-runTests">
    <echo>Test</echo>
  </target>
</project>

The property testSetupDone is set within the target in depends, and the output is:

Buildfile: build.xml

-runTests:

runTestsIfTestSetupDone:
     [echo] Test

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

Target -runTests is executed, even though testSetupDone is not set at this moment. runTestsIfTestSetupDone is executed afterwards, so depend is evaluated before if.

Answer 2

From the docs:

Ant tries to execute the targets in the depends attribute in the order they 
appear (from left to right). Keep in mind that it is possible that a 
target can get executed earlier when an earlier target depends on it:

<target name="A"/>
<target name="B" depends="A"/>
<target name="C" depends="B"/>
<target name="D" depends="C,B,A"/>

Suppose we want to execute target D. From its depends attribute, 
you might think that first target C, then B and then A is executed. 
Wrong! C depends on B, and B depends on A, 
so first A is executed, then B, then C, and finally D.

Call-Graph:  A --> B --> C --> D