Ant - Classpath

About

Classpath in a Ant Context

The classpath element is defined in and have the scope of a task.

<classpath>
    <pathelement location="lib/helper.jar"/>
    <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
</classpath>

where:

the location attribute refer to a single file or directory relative to the project's base directory (or an absolute filename)
the path attribute accepts colon- or semicolon-separated lists of locations. <note tip>PATH attribute use also “:” and “;” as separator characters.</note>

Libraries can be added to Ant's classpath in any of the following way:

Priority	Library	Library Scope
1	in ANT_HOME/lib directory	All Ant users and builds
2	in ${user.home}/.ant/lib (as of Ant 1.6)	The command-line Ant
3	with the command line -lib parameter	The command
4	in the CLASSPATH environment variable	<note warning>To Avoid</note> All Java applications
5	in the <classpath> element	<note tip>Preferred option</note> The task

To test for classpath-related problems, set the -noclasspath option. Ant will then stop using the CLASSPATH environment variable.

ant -noclasspath