How to upgrade ANT in Eclipse ?

To upgrade the ANT into the Eclipse, First you need to download the latest version of ANT anywhere on you machine.

Once you are done with the download then go to

Eclipse → Windows → Preferences → Ant → Runtime → Ant Home and Select the downloaded folder.

Now your Eclipse will use the latest version of ANT :)

Some ANT task

1. How to build  project from another build.

<target name="project2"
            description="Builds project2 project, required depedency">
        <!-- Build project2 first  -->

        <subant target="dist" verbose="yes" inheritall="false">
            <filelist dir="../com.waheed.project2"
                      files="build.xml" />
        </subant>
    </target>

 

2. How to read SVN revision and write into some file

<loadfile property="revision" srcFile="./.svn/entries">
        <filterchain>
            <headfilter skip="3" lines="1"/>
                  </filterchain>
        </loadfile>
            <tstamp>
                <format property="date" pattern="dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss" />
            </tstamp>
            <echo append="true" file="<FILE_NAME>" >revision=${revision}${line.separator}</echo>

3. How to generate Keystore

    <target name="keystore">
        <delete file="workdir/keystore" failonerror="false"/>
        <genkey keystore="./keystore"
                alias="jetty"
                storepass="password"
                keypass="password"
                keyalg="RSA"
                validity="10">
            <dname>
                <param name="CN" value="NAME" />
                <param name="OU" value="NAME_OF_ORGANIZATION_UNIT" />
                <param name="O" value="ORGANIZATION_NAME" />
                <param name="C" value="COUNTRY_NAME" />
            </dname>
        </genkey>
    </target>

4. How to get current time

<target name="time">
        <tstamp>
            <format property="build-time" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm" />
        </tstamp>
        <echo>${build-start-time}</echo>
    </target>

5 . How to create jar with manifest

 <jar jarfile="${dist}/name_of_jar.jar"
             basedir="${build}">
            <manifest>
                <!-- Who is building this jar? -->
                <attribute name="Built-By" value="${user.name}" />
                <!-- Information about the program itself -->
                <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor"
                           value="Implementation-Vendor" />
                <attribute name="Implementation-Title"
                           value="Implementation-Title" />
                <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0" />
                <!-- details -->
                <section name="PATH_TO_MAIN_CLASS">
                    <attribute name="Sealed" value="false" />
                </section>
            </manifest>
        </jar>

6. How to compile source

 <!-- Compile the java code from ${src} into ${build} -->

        <javac destdir="bin" debug="true">
            <src path="src" />
            <classpath>
                <pathelement location="../dependency/bin" />
                <fileset dir="../lib">
                    <include name="*.jar" />
                </fileset>
            </classpath>
        </javac>

7. How to compile source with dependency class path

 <path id="class.path">
        <fileset dir="../lib/folder1">
            <include name="*.jar" />
        </fileset>
        <fileset dir="../lib/folder2">
             <include name="*.jar" />
        </fileset>
    </path>

 <!-- Compile the java code from ${src} into ${build} -->
        <javac destdir="bin" debug="true">
            <src path="src" />
            <classpath refid="class.path" />
        </javac>

8.  How to build Zip file

    <property name="product.name" value="product1" />
    <property name="product.version" value="1.0" />
<zip basedir="${dist}" destfile="${dist}/${product.name}-${product.version}.zip">
        </zip>

9. How to build tar file

    <property name="product.name" value="product1" />
    <property name="product.version" value="1.0" />

<exec executable="tar" dir="${dist}">
            <arg value="czf" />
            <arg value="${dist}/${product.name}-${product.version}.tgz" />
            <arg value="." />
        </exec>

10 . How to check OS 

<condition property="isWindows">
        <os family="windows" />
    </condition>

    <condition property="isUnix">
        <os family="unix" />
    </condition>

    <target name="dist.windows" if="isWindows" depends="a">
<!--  Task to be done-- >
     </target>

    <target name="dist.unix" if="isUnix" depends="b">
<!--  Task to be done-- >
    </target>

11.  How to set permission to file

 <chmod perm="500">
            <fileset dir="${dist}">
                <include name="**/*.sh" />
                <include name="jsvc" />
            </fileset>
        </chmod>

12 .How to read property file

Suppose I have following data in my filename1.properties file and want to read it and write it to another file lets say name filename2.properties. 

filename1.properties

REVISION 777

     <property file="${dist}/filename1.properties" prefix="version"/>
       <echo file="${dist}/filename2.properties" append="true">revision ${version.REVISION}${line.separator}</echo>

How to read properties file using ANT

Suppose You have to access some properties (from a file), which are already defined in my build file. To be able to access the properties We can use the build attribute of the property task. 

build.properties

#Release information 
#Thu Oct 14 16:25:12 CEST 2004
build.number=115
release.version=0.4
release.name=framework

Ant Example Target

<target name="read.properties">    
  <!-- Read the properties from the release of the framework -->
  <property file="build.properties" prefix="build"/>
  <echo message="${build.build.number}"/>
  <echo message="${build.release.version}"/>
  <echo message="${build.release.name}"/>    
</target> 

Output

Buildfile: C:\build.xml
read.properties:
  [echo] 115
  [echo] 0.4
  [echo] framework
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 3 seconds

Apache Ant - Tutorial

Introduction:
Ant (originally an acronym for Another Neat Tool), is a build tool with special support for the Java programming language but can be used for just about everything.Ant is platform-independent; it is written purely in Java. Ant is particularly good at automating complicated repetitive tasks e.g. compiling source code, running software tests, creating jar files, javadocs, etc. and thus is well suited for automating standardised build processes.
A build process typically includes:
     -the compilation of the Java source code into Java bytecode
     -creation of the .jar file for the distribution of the code
     -creation of the Javadoc documentation
Ant accepts instructions in the form of XML documents("build.xml") thus is extensible and easy to maintain.

Installation:

Linux (Ubuntu / Debian)

On Debian /Ubuntu use "apt-get install ant" to install it.

Windows
Download Apache Ant from http://ant.apache.org/ .
Extract the zip file into a directory structure of your choice. Set the "ANT_HOME" environment variable to this location and include the "ANT_HOME/bin" directory in your path.
Make sure that also the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the JDK. This is required for running Ant.
Check your installation by opening a command line and typing "ant -version" into the commend line. The system should find the command ant and show the version number of your installed ant.
                                                                     OR
The documents entitled Configuring A Windows Working Environment andConfiguring A Unix Working Environment are of use to people who need to know more.

Basics:
A simple Ant example is shown below followed by a set of instructions indicating how to use Ant.

<?xml version="1.0"?>  

<project name="test" default="compile" basedir=".">  

        <property name="src" value="."/>  

        <property name="build" value="build"/>

        <target name="init">  

                <mkdir dir="${build}"/> 

        </target>

        <target name="compile" depends="init">  

                 <!-- Compile the java code -->

                 <javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${build}"/>   

         </target> 

</project>

1) The document begins with an XML declaration which specifies which version of XML is in use.

2) The root element of an Ant build file is the project element, it has three attributes.

• name: The name of the project, it can be any combination of alphanumeric characters that constitute valid XML.
• default: The default target to use when no target is specified, out of these three attributes default is the only required attribute.
• basedir: The base directory from which any relative directories used within the Ant build file are referenced from. If this is omitted the parent directory of the build file will be used.

3) The property element allows the declaration of properties which are like user-definable variables available for use within an Ant build file. The name attribute specifies the name of the property and the value attribute specifies the desired value of the property. 

4) The target element is used as a wrapper for a sequences of actions. A target has a name, so that it can be referenced from elsewhere, either externally from the command line, or internally via the depends keyword, or through a direct call. The target in the example is called "init" (initiate), it makes a directory using the mkdir element with the name specified by the build property

5) depends allows one to specify other targets that must be executed prior to the execution of this target. In the listing abovedepends="init" is used to indicate that the compile target requires that the target named init be executed prior to executing the body of compile.

6) The example above causes javac to be executed, compiling all the.java files in the directory specified by the src property and placing the resultant .class files in the directory specified by the build property.

Example:

Copy the source code into a text editor and save the file as build.xml.Create a test directory and place the file in it. Create some arbitrary .javafile and place it in the same directory as build.xml. For convenience, here is an example .java file: test.java. Place the java file in the same directory asbuild.xml.

public class test { 

    public static void main(String[] args) { 

        System.out.println("Hello World!"); 

    }

}

Type the following at the commandline in the test directory:
ant -v
This will create a directory called build, compile test.java and place the .class file created in the build directory. The -v directs ant to be verbose. This verbosity causes the command to echo lots of information, information that is not really necessary for most normal purposes. Execute the command sequence again. An example output message is shown below:

[javac] test.java omitted as /path/to/temp/build/test.class is up todate

A nice feature of Ant is that by default, only those .java input files that have a more recent timestamp than their corresponding .class output files will be compiled.

For more info:

http://ant.apache.org/manual/tutorial-HelloWorldWithAnt.html

http://ant.apache.org/manual/tutorial-writing-tasks.html

http://ant.apache.org/manual/using.html