Ant task to automate the start of my server and application

Question

I want to write Ant task to automate the task of starting my server and then open Internet Explorer with the URL of my application.

Obviously I have to execute the startServer task first and then startApplication task.

But Ant is not coming out of startServer task even after starting the server to execute startApplication task.

Basically I want Ant to understand that startServer will not end and ANT has to come out of startServer task and runstartApplication task while startServer task is running in background.

Answer 1

My guess is that you have an exec task in startServer. Add spawn="true" to the exec. Ant will then execute the command in the background and continue without waiting for it to complete.

Answer 2

I agree with Aaron you can use exec to do this, you can also use waitfor to test your connection.

<exec executable="${jboss.startup.bat}" spawn="true"/>
<echo>Waiting to start</echo>
<waitfor maxwait="10" maxwaitunit="second" checkevery="5000">
<!-- try to detect when the server has started -->
    <http url="${myurl}" />
</waitfor>
<echo>Started</echo>