help in Ant makefiles

[Abhi Chat]

could u guys help me in gettin accustomed in Ant ....i prefer to do the compiling part of the scjd through Ant..

thanx
abhi

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Abhi,

Perhaps you could provide us with an example of some task you are currently doing manually, then we might be able to offer an example of how to do it with ant.

Regards, Andrew

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Abhi Chat:
could u guys help me in gettin accustomed in Ant ....i prefer to do the compiling part of the scjd through Ant..

thanx
abhi

Here's the build.xml that I use to compile, jar and javadoc my project. Its pretty simple, no fancy dependencies or anything like that.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="scjd" default="compile" basedir=".">
    <target name="init">
<property name="name" value="scjd"/>
<property name="src.dir" value="code"/>
<property name="build.dir" value="build"/>
<property name="classes.dir" value="${build.dir}/classes"/>
<property name="etc.dir" value="etc"/>
    <property name="docs.dir" value="docs"/>
    <property name="deploy.name" value="runme.jar"/>
    </target>
 
    <target name="prepare" depends="init">
        <mkdir dir="${classes.dir}"/>
        <copy toDir="${classes.dir}/suncertify/gui/resources">
            <fileset dir ="${etc.dir}">
                <include name = "**/*.gif"/>
            </fileset>
        </copy>
        <copy toDir="${classes.dir}/suncertify/gui/resources">
            <fileset dir ="${etc.dir}">
                <include name = "**/*.html"/>
            </fileset>
        </copy>
    </target>
    
    <target name="clean" depends="init">
        <delete dir="${classes.dir}"/>
    </target>
    
    <target name="compile" depends="prepare">
        <javac srcdir="${src.dir}"
               destdir="${classes.dir}"
               debug="true"
               deprecation="true"
               source="1.4"
               target="1.4"
               optimize="false"/>
    </target>
 
    <target name="rmic" depends="compile">
        <rmic classname="suncertify.rmi.DataAdapterImpl" stubversion="1.2" 
                base="${classes.dir}"/>
        <rmic classname="suncertify.rmi.DataAdapterFactoryImpl" stubversion="1.2" 
                base="${classes.dir}"/>
    </target>
    
    <target name="jarfile" depends="rmic">
    <jar destfile="${build.dir}/runme.jar"
    basedir="${classes.dir}"
    manifest="${etc.dir}/MANIFEST.MF"/>
    </target>
    
    <target name="doc" depends="jarfile">
        <javadoc sourcepath="${src.dir}"
            access="public"
            destdir="${docs.dir}"
            classpath="${classes.dir}">
            <package name="suncertify.*"/>
        </javadoc>    
    </target>
</project>

[Andy Zhu]

Not a fan of Ant. Found gnu make is quite easy and works for me. Actually it will have me write a short script.

[Inuka Vincit]

Although I am working on an ANT build file...
JBuilder the free version, can handle all the building part if you dont want to or dont have time of learning ANT. Whats more the editor is briliantly good since it detects and underlines syntax errors saves me a bunch of time.

[jiju ka]

I am using WSAD for the URLyBird.You may donload the freeware ide eclipse from eclipse.org which is what WSAD is using.

Other choices are NetBeans which Sun prefers but not IBM.

[vydhehi paruchuri]

Which version og JBuilder is free?

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by vydhehi paruchuri:
Which version og JBuilder is free?

The Foundation Edition, but don't use JBuilder for the SCJD, it will do too much to help build your GUI.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Originally posted by Andy Zhu:
Not a fan of Ant. Found gnu make is quite easy and works for me. Actually it will have me write a short script.

I am a convert to Ant.

I used to use make extensively to the point where I was asked to provide training to other companies and to help out other development teams with it. And I know from experience the difficulties you can get when dealing with the different variants (is the platform I am writing for using GNU make or POSIX or ???). But when writing C programs that were being compiled under many different Unix variants, it was great.

Ant's large number of built in tasks, but the add on tasks makes life so much easier than using make. And then the ant script can usually be run directly from the command line and/or many of the popular IDEs.

Regards, Andrew

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Abhi,

Did Peter's ant file help you? Or are you thinking about posting a command line you would like converted into an ant script so you can see how it is done?

Regards, Andrew

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Andrew Monkhouse:
I am a convert to Ant.

I used to use make extensively ...

Same here, I've used so many different make utilities, I can't keep them straight, there's make, gmake, nmake, not to mention polytron pmake and make like utilities in other systems.

Ant is great for building java, it has all sorts of built in tasks that do much of what you need, and none of the Unix strange syntax (only known by shell programming gurus). Some people, myself included, aren't certain the XML syntax is the best, but it sure beats shell.

[Inuka Vincit]

Originally posted by peter wooster:


The Foundation Edition, but don't use JBuilder for the SCJD, it will do too much to help build your GUI.

]

Agreed. But you dont have to use the built in GUI Builder
But its the editor that got me. I tried eclipse and JEdit... but cant beat the built in sytax highlighting and checking. Its nice to have 0 syntax every time you do a complie .

I am also a convert from Make... I changed over for practicle reasons could get the winblows make port to work properly.

[Abhi Chat]

Hi Andrew,

Thanx guys for all your help....Andrew it would be nice if you could help me
with an ANT script of the project 2 version of Mehrams Habibis book...it would be really a good startin point for me...

Thanx

Abhi

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Abhi,

This is a very simple ant build file, which is designed to just compile the source files in the project. I have not gone into the RMIC or JAR commands in this first build file, as I want to keep the first part simple. A little further down this post you will see the more advanced version of the ant script.

<!-- The first line is important. It tells us the name of the project,
     what the default task is if you don't specify one on the command line,
     and what directory should be used as the base directory for finding all
     other files (usually '.' for current directory).
-->
<project name="DVD Database" default="compile" basedir=".">
 
  <!-- We can define some constants here. In this case, we are just specifying
       a few directories. But these could be any sort of definition.
  -->
  <property name="build" value="classes"/>
  <property name="doc"   value="doc/api"/>
 

  <!-- We will now define a few tasks. A task must have a name, and it may have
       an optional dependency (depend) and/or an optional description. If it
       has a description it will appear as an option on the command line if
       you ask for help, and will appear as runnable options in some IDEs. If
       there are no descriptions, then all tasks will appear.
  -->
 
  <target name="init">
    <!-- There is no description as I don't want users to run this normally -->
    <!-- Create the build directory structure used by compile -->
    <mkdir dir="${build}"/>
  </target>
 

  <target name="compile"
       depends="init"
   description="Compiles all the base classes">
        <javac  srcdir="."
               destdir="${build}"
             classpath="${libs}"
                source="1.4"
                 debug="on">
          <include name="**/*.java" />
        </javac>
  </target>
</project>

Save this as "build.xml" in your base directory (the one containing the "sampleproject" directory). Then you can use this to compile the source code just by typing "ant" at the command line. This is a little easier than retyping the entire set of compilation commands each time a single file changes!

Make sure you understand what is happening in that build file before going on. If there is something you don't understand, then the following won't help.

Here is a slightly longer version of that XML file, which includes targets to run the RMIC compiler, and to make the executable jar file:

<!-- The first line is important. It tells us the name of the project,
     what the default task is if you don't specify one on the command line,
     and what directory should be used as the base directory for finding all
     other files (usually '.' for current directory).
-->
<project name="DVD Database" default="compile" basedir=".">
 
  <!-- We can define some constants here. In this case, we are just specifying
       a few directories. But these could be any sort of definition.
  -->
  <property name="build" value="classes"/>
  <property name="doc"   value="doc/api"/>
 

  <!-- We will now define a few tasks. A task must have a name, and it may have
       an optional dependency (depend) and/or an optional description. If it
       has a description it will appear as an option on the command line if
       you ask for help, and will appear as runnable options in some IDEs. If
       there are no descriptions, then all tasks will appear.
  -->
 

  <target name="init">
    <!-- There is no description as I don't want users to run this normally -->
    <!-- Create the build directory structure used by compile -->
    <mkdir dir="${build}"/>
  </target>
 

  <target name="compile"
       depends="init"
   description="Compiles all the base classes">
        <javac  srcdir="."
               destdir="${build}"
             classpath="${libs}"
                source="1.4"
                 debug="on">
          <include name="**/*.java" />
        </javac>
  </target>
 

  <target name="rmic" depends="compile">
      <rmic base="${build}" verify="true"/>
  </target>
 

  <target name="dist"
       depends="rmic"
   description="builds the executable jar file">
 
    <!-- We can define constants here as well - in this particular case the
         location is almost certainly wrong, but it is just for demo purposes.
    -->
    <property name="dist"  value="dist"/>
 
    <!-- Now we will use that constant -->
    <mkdir dir="${dist}"/>
 
    <manifest file="manifest.MF">
      <attribute name="Manifest-Version" value="1.0"/>
      <attribute name="Main-Class" value="sampleproject.gui.ApplicationRunner"/>
    </manifest>
 
    <delete file="${dist}/sampleproject.jar"/>
 
    <jar jarfile="${dist}/sampleproject.jar"
         basedir="${build}"
         includes="**/*"
         manifest="manifest.MF"
    />
  </target>
 

</project>

If you run the command "ant -projecthelp" in the directory containing the above build.xml file, you will get the following output:

C:\Temp\Max>ant -projecthelp
Buildfile: build.xml
 
Main targets:
 
 compile  Compiles all the base classes
 dist     builds the executable jar file
Default target: compile

If you look through the build.xml file above, you will see that the compile and dist targets are the only two targets that I created a description for. That is why they are the only two targets that appear when you ask for project help. However there is nothing to stop you running one of the other targets directly. You could, for example, run ant rmic and it will run the rmic target.

I have tried to make this readable, without writing an entire book on the subject.

Please ask questions if you are unsure of anything.

Regards, Andrew

[Abhi Chat]

Thanx Andrew...this would surely get me started .....