Only executed once. From
Writing a Simple Buildfile in
ant manual:
A target can depend on other targets. You might have a target for compiling, for example, and a target for creating a distributable. You can only build a distributable when you have compiled first, so the distribute target depends on the compile target. Ant resolves these dependencies.
It should be noted, however, that Ant's depends attribute only specifies the order in which targets should be executed - it does not affect whether the target that specifies the dependency(s) gets executed if the dependent target(s) did not (need to) run.
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.
In a chain of dependencies stretching back from a given target such as D above, each target gets executed only once, even when more than one target depends on it. Thus, executing the D target will first result in C being called, which in turn will first call B, which in turn will first call A. After A, then B, then C have executed, execution returns to the dependency list of D, which will not call B and A, since they were already called in process of dependency resolution for C and B respectively as dependencies of D. Had no such dependencies been discovered in processing C and B, B and A would have been executed after C in processing D's dependency list.
An exception I can think of is when an
antcall task is used:
When a target is invoked by antcall, all of its dependent targets will also be called within the context of any new parameters. For example. if the target "doSomethingElse" depended on the target "init", then the antcall of "doSomethingElse" will call "init" during the call. Of course, any properties defined in the antcall task or inherited from the calling target will be fixed and not overridable in the init task--or indeed in the "doSomethingElse" task.
[ April 19, 2005: Message edited by: Carol Enderlin ]