Additionally, the following built-in properties are available: Property Name Prefix to apply to properties loaded using file, resource or urlĪll system properties that can be accessed from the System.getProperties() methods in Java can be used in Ant. Prefix to use when accessing environment variables The classpath to use when looking up a resource The basedir to calculate the relative path from Location in the classpath of the properties file If the value passed through is not an absolute path it will be made relative to the project basedir Properties can be defined within the build script or in separate property files to provide more customizable build scripts. The name of a property which must not be set for this target to runĪdd the target to the depends list of the named extension point The name of a property which must be set for this target to run Table 1: Project element attributes AttributeĬomma separated list of other targets that this target depends on The default target to run when no other target has been specified Attributeīase directory from which all path calculations are done When running, Ant resolves these dependencies so that your script gets executed in the order you have specified. The most important concept in Ant is that of dependencies. The project element can specify a default target if no target is chosen during execution of the build script.įigure 1: The basic structure of an Ant build script.

A target contains a set of tasks to be executed. Within the project element there are one or more targets specified. The root element of the build script is the project tag. A typical Ant script consists of a single build.xml file.

Apache ant doc