Errata

Ant:  The Definitive Guide

Errata for Ant: The Definitive Guide

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Color Key: Serious technical mistake Minor technical mistake Language or formatting error Typo Question Note Update

Version Location Description Submitted by Date submitted
Printed Page 3
3

In Chapter 1, the <project> tag in your build.xml contains a default of 'compile',
while (I think) the default should be 'all' (so that the build includes the jar
target, too). The way it is, only clean and compile would be executed, and no
oreilly.jar would be produced. The error is both in the book, and in the examples
download.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 3
target name = "jar"

The description for this target states that oreilly.jar is
placed in the 'dist' directory. As Figure 1.2 properly
shows, oreilly.jar is placed in the 'lib' directory.

Note that a change in this description will affect the result
of -projecthelp as displayed at the top of page 7.

Also note that this error exists in the actual buildfile.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 17
First code example

The example of setting ANT_OPTS, will not work with Windows 98 because W98 does not
permit equals signs to be in the value string. In other words, commands like:

set ANT_OPTS=-Dlog.dir=mydir

are syntax errors in W98.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 28
Figure 3-1

Figure 3-1 is supposed to represent the directory structure
of the irssibot example. The /build directory is shown as
having four subdirectories: /lib, /bin, /doc, and /irssibot.

But the build.xml buildfile and the downloaded example code
show that one subdirectory under /build must be /classes, with /irssibot a
subdirectory of /classes.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 31
Third code snippet (after paragraph 3)

The line
<property name="javac.debug" value="on"/>

should be
<property name="debug.flag" value="on"/>

The flag is referred to as debug.flag throughout the rest of the chapter and in the
final example.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 41
1st paragraph

The sentence: "Errors, however, occur within two distinct phases during the
processing of an element, and understanding these phases alleviates some
frustrations."

1. The sentence is about twenty words long. Clearly - "Understanding the two phases
alleviates some frustrations. " could be an independent sentence.

2. Splitting occur and during apart in the sentence makes it very hard to read.
Better would be "Errors, however, occur chronologically within two distinc phases of
processing."

3. I don't believe it is the processing of an element per se. I believe it is the
proceesing of a build file.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 68
first code example

The line

<patternset refid="${xml.files}"/>

is not correct.
It must be modified to

<patternset refid="xml.files"/>

Anonymous   
Printed Page 68
3rd paragraph

Note that in the example, the execution line:

$ ant -Dincludetests=true compile

implies that the similar command:

$ ant -Dincludetests=false compile

will not compile the tests, however, this is untrue. You may want to add a "trap"
section here explaining that anytime "includetests" is set, regardless of value or
location, the test sources will be compiled. This holds true with any of the
conditional attributes (if or unless on patternset or target).

Anonymous   
Printed Page 78
last line

The fully qualified class name for MatchingTask is incorrect. I had a look at ant
1.4.1 and ant 1.5 and it should be:
org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.MatchingTask
not
org.apache.tools.ant.main.taskdef.MatchingTask

Anonymous   
Printed Page 103
the make directory

task reads:

<mkdir name="${build.dir}"/>

"Name" is not an attribute of the mkdir task; the proper attribute name is
"dir". The task should read:

<mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>

Anonymous   
Printed Page 254
bottom example

I tried to use the example at the bottom under the "Using Ant to Consolidate
Libraries" in my own buildfile but the ant compiler tells me that:

The <jar> task doesn't support the "destdir" attribute.

and according to the description of jar, that is correct

Anonymous   
Printed Page 257
2nd line

the attribute for property tag is not *name* but *file*

Anonymous   
Printed Page 263
Symbols

The backslash, forward slash, and semicolon are listed as on page xv when in reality
they are on xvii.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 263
Symbols "/"

The forward slash is identified as a path separator on page 24 and the reference is
missing from the index.

Anonymous