New to ant - Compilation failure

[Kavita Ghia]

Hi,

I have the following code in my build.xml file

<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<project name="kavitaexamples" basedir ="." default = "init">
<target name="init">
<delete dir="classes"/>
<mkdir dir="classes"/>
</target>
<target name="compile" depends="init">
<javac src="." destdir=".">
</javac>
</target>
</project>

I have my hello.java file in the current directory.

The build is successful, however the hello.class file in not created in the current directory. Only classes folder gets deleted & recreated.
Please guide me as to where I am going wrong.

[James Sabre]

You need to tell it which files to compile. For example

javac src="." destdir="classes">
         <include name="*.java"/>
</javac> 

will compile all Java files in the current directory and place the result in the directory 'classes' relative to the current directory.

[Kavita Ghia]

HI,

I could resolve the problem as under:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<project default="main" basedir=".">

	<property name="dist" location="c:/apache-tomcat-7.0.11/webapps/kavitaexamples/WEB-INF"/>
	<property name="app" location="c:/apache-tomcat-7.0.11/webapps/kavitaexamples/"/>
	 <property name="src" location="source" />
	 <property name="output" location="classes" />
 	 <property name="staticpages" location="pages" />

         
        <target name="main" depends="clean,compile,deploy">
                <echo message="Deploying the Web app...."/>
        </target>
        
       <target name="clean">
			 <delete dir="${output}" />
		    <mkdir dir="${output}" />
		</target>

		<target name="compile">
			 <javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${output}" />
		</target>

		<target name ="deploy">
		<echo message = "Copying files"/>
			<copy todir="${dist}/classes">
				 <fileset dir="${output}"></fileset>
			</copy>
			<copy todir="${app}/pages">
					<fileset dir="${staticpages}">
					<include name="**/*.jsp"/>
					<include name="**/*.htm*"/>
				    </fileset>
			</copy>
			<copy file="${src}/web.xml" todir="${dist}"/>
			<echo message = "Files copied"/>
	    </target>


	
</project>

Is there a better way of copying the webapp files into tomcat? Would appreciate any pointer.

Thanks,
Kavita

[Peter Johnson]

I follow the mechanism used by Maven, even when doing builds in Ant. Basically, I do this:

1) Compile the java source files
2) Copy all of the files that make up the WAR into a directory (this is an exploded WAR)
3) Convert the directory in step 2 into a WAR file
4) Copy either the exploded WAR from step 2 or the WAR file from step 4 to Tomcat

I recommend you study Maven to see how it does this, and even if you decide not to go with Maven, follow its basic build steps (and follow its directory structure).