Any way to generate ant build xml file automatically from Eclipse

Question

From Eclipse  I found I can easily export an Ant build file for my project  It provides references to 3rd party libraries and some base targets  I m using it from my global build file  The only thing that bothers me about this  is that if something is modified in the project structure  like adding a new 3rd party library   we have to think  yes that can be hard sometimes   about regenerating that build xml file  I m wondering if anyone here knows a way to have it updated automatically  By  automatically  I mean that it would not be necessary to explicitly ask Eclipse to regenerate it every time it s needed  I don t know what could be the trigger though     Any thoughts or knowledge on this   Thanks   MJ

User · Answer

I have been trying to do the same myself. What I found was that the "Export Ant Buildfile" gets kicked off in the org.eclipse.ant.internal.ui.datatransfer.AntBuildfileExportPage.java file. This resides in the org.eclipse.ant.ui plugin.

To view the source, use the Plug-in Development perspective and open the Plug-ins view. Then right-click on the org.eclipse.ant.ui plugin and select import as > source project.

My plan is to create a Java program to programmatically kick off the ant buildfile generation and call this in an Ant file every time I build by adding the ant file to the builders of my projects (Right-click preferences on a projet, under the builders tab).

User · Answer

Take a look at the  classpath file in your project  which probably contains most of the information that you want  The easiest option may be to roll your own  build xml export   i e  process  classpath into a new build xml during the build itself  and then call it with an ant subtask   Parsing a little XML sounds much easier to me than to hook into Eclipse JDT

User · Answer

If all you need is the classpath entries  I do something like the following to use the eclipse build path    lt xmlproperty file   classpath  collapseAttributes  true  delimiter       gt    Then set that value in the path   lt path id  eclipse classpath  gt       lt pathelement path    classpath classpathentry path    gt   lt  path gt     lt target name  compile  depends  init  gt        lt javac srcdir    src   destdir    build   updatedProperty  compiled  gt           lt classpath refid  eclipse classpath   gt       lt  javac gt   lt  target gt

User · Answer

I m the one who donated the Ant export filter to Eclipse  I added the auto export feature  but only to my personal plug-in eclipse2ant  which I still maintain to coordinate bug fixes   Unfortunately I have no time to merge it to the official Eclipse builds

User · Answer

Right-click on an Eclipse project then  Export  then  General  then  Ant build files   I don t think it is possible to customise the output format though

User · Answer

Select File   Export from main menu  or right click on the project name and select Export   Export      In the Export dialog  select General   Ant Buildfiles as follows   Click Next  In the Generate Ant Buildfilesscreen    Check the project in list  Uncheck the option  Create target to compile project using Eclipse compiler   - because we want to create a build file which is independent of Eclipse  Leave the Name for Ant buildfile as default  build xml       Click Finish  Eclipse will generate the build xml file under project   s directory as follows    Double click on the build xml file to open its content in Ant editor     source

User · Answer

I ve had the same problem  our work environment is based on Eclipse Java projects  and we needed to build automatically an ANT file so that we could use a continuous integration server  Jenkins  in our case    We rolled out our own Eclipse Java to Ant tool  which is now available on GitHub   ant-build-for-java  To use it  call   java -jar ant-build-for-java jar  lt folder with repositories gt    lt  userlibraries file gt     The first argument is the folder with the repositories  It will search the folder recursively for any  project file  The tool will create a build xml in the given folder    Optionally  the second argument can be an exported  userlibraries file  from Eclipse  needed when any of the projects use Eclipse user libraries  The tool was tested only with user libraries using relative paths  it s how we use them in our repo  This implies that JARs and other archives needed by projects are inside an Eclipse project  and referenced from there   The tool only supports dependencies from other Eclipse projects and from Eclipse user libraries

[java] Any way to generate ant build.xml file automatically from Eclipse?

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