Ant: using antcall with different parameters sent to construct a pathid

[Joe Vahabzadeh]

Ok, so, this is where I'm trying to put things together conveniently.....

In another thread, I got my build targets to work, with their slightly different classpath requirements, by doing the following (and of course, in this case, Project-1 MUST be compiled before Project-2):

    <target name="buildProject-1">  
        <echo message="Building project Project-1..." />  
        <path id="test.class.path">  
            <fileset dir="../Project-1">  
                <include name="lib/**/*.jar" />  
            </fileset>  
            <fileset dir="../Project-Common">  
                <include name="lib/**/*.jar" />  
            </fileset>  
        </path>  
        <javac srcdir="../Project-1/src" destdir="../Project-1/bin" includeAntRuntime="false">  
            <classpath refid="test.class.path" />  
        </javac>  
        <echo message="Project-1 build complete." />  
    </target>  
  
    <target name="buildProject-2">  
        <echo message="Building project Project-2..." />  
        <path id="test.class.path">  
            <fileset dir="../Project-2">  
                <include name="lib/**/*.jar" />  
            </fileset>  
            <dirset dir="../Project-1/bin/" />
            <fileset dir="../Project-Common">  
                <include name="lib/**/*.jar" />  
            </fileset>  
        </path>  
        <javac srcdir="../Project-2/src" destdir="../Project-2/bin" includeAntRuntime="false">  
            <classpath refid="test.class.path" />  
        </javac>  
        <echo message="Project-2 build complete." />  
    </target>  
</project>

All well and good. However, what I'd ideally like to do is something like this:

	<target name="buildAll">
		<antcall target="buildModule">
			<param name="project.name" value="Project-1" />
			<!-- somehow define a parameter that indicates directories that we want to get the .jar files for -->
			<!-- somehow define a parameter that indicates bin directories of already compiled projects - but in this case NONE -->
		</antcall>
		<antcall target="buildModule">
			<param name="project.name" value="Project-2" />
			<!-- somehow define a parameter that indicates directories that we want to get the .jar files for -->
			<!-- somehow define a parameter that indicates bin directories of already compiled projects -->
		</antcall>
	</target>
	<target name="buildModule">
		<echo message="Building project: ${project.name}..." />
		<mkdir dir="../${project.name}/bin" />
		<path id="consolidated.class.path">
			<!-- somehow consolidate the fileset info parameter for the .jar files, and the directory set info parameter for the previously compiled classes we're dependent on -->
		</path>
		<javac srcdir="../MaxUI/src" destdir="../MaxUI/bin" includeAntRuntime="false">
			<classpath refid="consolidated.class.path" />
		</javac>
		<echo message="${project.name} build complete." />
	</target>

Note the commented out stuff - all the somehow do somethings... Is it possible to do what I want without this being an enormous mess? Or is it just easier to do the classpath as I've done in the first example, and not bother with the antcall stuff in this case.

[Peter Johnson]

To maintain sanity, build only one artifact (that is, a single jar or war) within a single build.xml. The build.xml should be in the base directory of the project, and only files related to that projects should be in that same directory and its subdirectories. If you want to build multiple artifacts at once, write a master build.xml script (in yet another directory) that invokes the other build.xml scripts. At least, this is what I used to do years ago, I had some really complicated master build.xml scripts that did all kinds of magic. In your case, I can see three level - the lowest level for the individual jar files, the next level up build a build.xml that builds the artifacts for a project, and the third level being a master build.xml that invokes the two project's build.xml files.

The better way is to use Maven to build each artifact, Nexus to store the built artifacts, and Jenkins to fire off the builds in the desired order (if you really must do that, I've found it's not always needed - why rebuild a project that hasn't change?).