Ant-Contrib

Steve J. — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:16:55 +0000

In some cases, ANT has it’s limitations. For example, it is not really easy to create an if-else structure or a for-loop. For this reason, a few people started long time ago the Ant-Contrib project. Just download it and put the jar file in the lib folder of the project. Then, just at following line to the build file:

 resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties">>

Now, you can start using constructs like if, foreach and combine these tasks with usual ANT tasks. Here a little example:

with antcontrib:

 name="theultimateconditionmachine">
  >
     arg1="${foo}" arg2="bar" />
    >
       message="property foo is bar" />
    >
    >
       message="property foo is not bar" />
    >
  >
>

without antcontrib:
if you want to perform the same task with ant, you need to create 4 (!) ant targets:

 name="noway">
   target="conditionIf"/>
   target="conditionElse"/>
>
 
 name="conditionDef">
   property="conditionIsTrue">
     arg1="${foo}" arg2="bar"/>
  >
>
 
 name="conditionIf" depends="conditionDef" if="conditionIsTrue">
   message="property foo is bar"/>
>
 
 name="conditionElse" depends="conditionDef" unless="conditionIsTrue">
   message="property foo is not bar"/>
>

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Ant-Contrib