Ant is running an out-of-date task class -- why?

[James Adams]

I have a small Java program which populates database tables with test data. I am running this program from Ant using a <taskdef> in the target. I launch this Ant task with Eclipse using the External Tools button.

I have recently updated the Java class in order to add different test data to the tables. However now when I run the Ant task the old class gets executed and the old test data is inserted into my database tables. This happens no matter how many times I restart Eclipse or rebuild my project. It appears that the original class is still present in some directory that Ant uses in its classpath, and this out-of-date class is taking precedence over the new version. The new class is present in the classpath which I assign in build.xml. I can find no instance of the previous version of the class which Ant is running instead of the current version.

One thing of interest is that when I run the Ant task in Eclipse I get a message telling me "Waiting for virtual machine to exit" -- I'm not sure what this means but perhaps it has some significance?

My task is defined in the Ant target like so:

    <target name="populate"
            description="Creates and persists some sample Ioi, Trader, and Firm objects">
        <taskdef name="populateTables"
                 classname="com.mycom.focus.tools.PopulateTables"
                 classpathref="project.class.path">
        </taskdef>
        <populateTables/>
    </target>

If anyone can shed any light on this for me I'd certainly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!


--James
[ August 11, 2005: Message edited by: James Adams ]

[James Adams]

The problem turned out to be a bonehead mistake on my part. I have both a main() and an execute() method in my class. The execute() is just a copy of the code in main(), and when I modified the class I modified the code in main() without making the same changes to execute(), which is the actual method that Ant is running. Now that I have made the changes in execute() all is well again in the universe.


--James