Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Running Ant Build Files

You have two options to run these build files from within Eclipse. You can right-click build.xml in the Package Explorer and select Run→ Ant Build. Doing so runs Ant and gives you the results in Eclipse's Console view.

Tip

Eclipse 3.0 runs Ant in a separate JVM, solving many problems that used to plague previous versions.

The output in the Console view is the same as you'd see from Ant if you ran the build file on the command line:

Buildfile: D:\eclipse3\eclipse\workspace\AntExample\build.xml
compile:
    [javac] Compiling 1 source file
compress:
      [jar] Building jar: D:\eclipse3\eclipse\workspace\AntExample\Project.jar
main:
     [echo] Building the .jar file.
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 2 seconds

If there are problems, you can see Ant's output in the Console view. Eclipse will give you a summary in the Problems view, which you can see by clicking the Problems tab at the bottom of Eclipse.

The other option to run a build file is to right-click build.xml in the Package Explorer and select Run→ Ant Build..., this time with an ellipsis (three dots). This opens the Ant launch configuration dialog you see in Figure 11-6. The Ant launch configuration is specific to the current project.

Figure 11-6. Selecting an Ant target

By default, the Targets tab is selected in this dialog, showing a list of the targets in build.xml. The default target has been selected; you can click ...