Apache Ant - Flow (Dependency, Condition)

depends

Targets can depend on other targets and Apache Ant ensures that these other targets have been executed before.

Each target gets executed only once, even when more than one target depends on it.

The below build file:

<target name="A"/>
<target name="B" depends="A"/>
<target name="C" depends="B"/>
<target name="D" depends="C,B,A"/>

will result on the following call graph:

A --> B --> C --> D

extension-point

An extension point can be seen as a target to be imported.

They have a name and a depends list and can be executed from the command line.

For example, the below build:

<target name="create-directory-layout"/>
<extension-point name="ready-to-compile" depends="create-directory-layout"/>
<target name="compile" depends="ready-to-compile"/>
</target>

will result in the following call-graph:

create-directory-layout -->  --> compile

Adding the following target in the build (but mostly through an import):

<target name="generate-sources" extensionOf="ready-to-compile"/>

will result in the following call-graph

create-directory-layout --> generate-sources --> compile