Ant - taskdef (Optional Task)

About

An optional task is a task which typically requires an external library to function.

Prerequisites

Adding library

Use Ant's own mechanisms for adding libraries:

• via command line argument -lib
• adding to ${user.home}/.ant/lib
• adding to ${ant.home}/lib

Declaration

Single Task

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="OwnTaskExample" default="main" basedir=".">

  <taskdef name="mytask" classname="com.mydomain.MyVeryOwnTask"/>

  <target name="main">
    <mytask message="Hello World! MyVeryOwnTask works!"/>
  </target>
  
</project>

Properties file

declare a bundle of tasks using a properties-file holding these taskname-ImplementationClass-pairs and <taskdef>

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties" /> <for ... />

Xml file

declare a bundle of tasks using a xml-file holding these taskname-ImplementationClass-pairs and <taskdef>

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml" /> <for ... />

antlib.xml

declare a bundle of tasks using an xml-file named antlib.xml, XML-namespace and antlib: protocol handler

<project xmlns:ac="antlib:net.sf.antcontrib"/> <ac:for ... /> 

Documentation / Reference

• Developing with Apache Ant