A few days after Apache Commons Compress 1.3 has been released the Compress Antlib has seen a new release as well. This gives Ant support for Zip64 extensions, the Unix dump format (read-only) and the Pack200 format.
Prior to this release Pack200 support has already been available
via a a task
at java.net but the Compress Antlib also adds a
pack200resource as well as a
pack200normalize task that can be used to "normalize" a
JAR so that it can be signed, packed and unpacked with the signature
remaining valid.
path: /en/Apache/Ant | # | Writebacks
Ant releases have become more frequent than my blog posts by now, oh my. I won't promise anything.
While most of the world was on vacation Antoine (again) put together a new relase of Apache Ant and announced 1.8.2 late December. As usual a full list of fixed issues can be found in Bugzilla. This time it not only contains bug fixes (quite a few of them, though) but also some new features like improved support for Apache Harmony, gcj and OpenJDK7 (where javac likes to break command line backwards compatibility again).
The issues that came up most frequently and have been fixed are "xslt no longer uses the specified classpath" and "propertyfile with prefix doesn't work as expected" IIRC.
We've added a new collection so that the order of files inside <copy> has become predictable. Detecting Ant 1.8.2 means either
<antversion property="Ant-1.8.2-or-later"
atleast="1.8.2"/>
or
<available property="Ant-1.8.2-or-later"
classname="org.apache.tools.ant.util.LinkedHashtable"/>
path: /en/Apache/Ant | # | Writebacks
Last weekend Antoine announced Ant 1.8.1. This is more or less a
pure bugfix release which addresses a few important issues. The fix
with the biggest impact likely is that
<extension-point> and <import>
finally work together as intended - and even documented.
The full list of issues raised against Ant that have been fixed with this release can be found in Bugzilla. We've adressed almost all issues raised against Ant 1.8.0 so far.
Thanks to the new <augment> task, detecting Ant
1.8.1 means either
<antversion property="Ant-1.8.1-or-later"
atleast="1.8.1"/>
or
<available property="Ant-1.8.1-or-later"
classname="org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.AugmentReference"/>
path: /en/Apache/Ant | # | Writebacks
So Apache Ant 1.8.0 is out and I'm supposed to follow a tradition I started with Ant 1.6.2. If you can be sure that you are at least using Ant 1.7.0 then the built-in <antversion> task/condition will do:
<antversion property="Ant-1.8.0-or-later"
atleast="1.8.0"/>
otherwise the trick of checking for a class that has been introduced with Ant 1.8.0 can always be used:
<available property="Ant-1.8.0-or-later"
classname="org.apache.tools.ant.types.resources.MappedResource"/>
path: /en/Apache/Ant | # | Writebacks
Antoine Levy-Lambert has recently built the first release candidate for Ant 1.8.0 and called for a vote, so we should be close to the first Ant release since eighteen months. This release mostly brings enhancements and bug fixes to many tasks and types (this is the real strength of Ant IMHO) but there also are a few core changes, the full list is here.
My personal top five changes (I know there are six items, but the first one doesn't count ;-):
- More than 275 fixed Bugzilla issues.
- Lexically scoped local properties, i.e. properties that are only
defined inside a target, sequential block or similar environment.
This is very useful inside of
<macrodef>s where a macro can now define a temporary property that will disappear once the task has finished. <import>can now import from any file- or URL-providing resource - this includes<javaresource>. This means<import>can read build file snippets from JARs or fixed server URLs. There are several other improvements in the area of import.- Various improvements to the directory scanning code that help with symbolic link cycles (as can be found on MacOS X Java installations for example) and improve scanning performance. For big directory trees the improvement is dramatic.
- The way developers can extend Ant's property expansion algorithm
has been rewritten (breaking the older API) to be easier to use a
be more powerful. The whole local properties mechanism is
implemented using that API and could be implemented in a separate
library without changes in Ant's core. Things like the
yet-to-be-released props
Antlib can now provide often required "scripty" fuctions
without touching Ant itself.
At the same time the if and unless attributes have been rewritten to do the expected thing if applied to a property expansion (i.e.if="${foo}"will mean "yes, do it" if${foo}expands to true, in Ant 1.7.1 it would mean "no" unless a property named "true" existed). This adds "testing conditions" as a new use-case to property expansion. - A new top-level element
<extension-point>assists in writing re-usable build files that are meant to be imported.<extension-point>has a name and a dependency-list like<target>and can be used like a<target>from the command line or a dependy-list but the importing build file can add targets to the<extension-point>'s depends list.
In Ant 1.7.1 one would use something likeimported.xml: <project name="imported"...> ... <target name="setup"> ... </target> <target name="compile" depends="setup"> ... </target> </project> importing.xml <project ...> ... <import file="imported.xml"> <target name="setup" depends="imported.setup"> ... stuff that should happen before compile ... </target> </project>to define a pre-compilation stage by target overriding. With some planning it can be improved toimported.xml: <project name="imported"...> ... <target name="setup"> ... </target> <target name="ready-to-compile" depends="setup"/> <target name="compile" depends="ready-to-compile"> ... </target> </project> importing.xml <project ...> ... <import file="imported.xml"> <target name="ready-to-compile" depends="imported.ready-to-compile"> ... stuff that should happen before compile ... </target> </project>In Ant 1.8.0 one would write this asimported.xml: <project name="imported"...> ... <target name="setup"> ... </target> <extension-point name="ready-to-compile" depends="setup"/> <target name="compile" depends="ready-to-compile"> ... </target> </project> importing.xml <project ...> ... <import file="imported.xml"> <target name="pre-compile" extensionOf="ready-to-compile"> ... stuff that should happen before compile ... </target> </project>and thepre-compiletarget was added toready-to-compiledependeny-list.
extension-point and some changes
in import and its new cousin include have
been inspired by Easyant
which can now use an un-patched version of Ant together with a
custom ProjectHelper to create a build system quite
different from Ant's original ideas. ProjectHelper is the mechanism that allowed
me
to sketch
JavaFront
or Nicolas Lalevée to
write GroovyFront
which lets you write build files in Groovy.
path: /en/Apache/Ant | # | Writebacks