How to specify the path of a JAR in an ant buildfile

antbuildbuild.xmljarjsch

I am executing lot of scp and sshexec and other remote commands from an ant build script. These commands don't work if jsch.jar isn't in the ant lib directory. To make it work, I copied the JAR into the ant lib directory, but this is not a good solution, as anyone else wanting to run the script would have to do the same thing. To run the ant target from Teamcity, we will have to explicitly set the path of the lib file.

Is there a way I can specify the path of the JAR in the ant build XML itself?

Best Answer

Thanks all for your answers. I am managed to get it work with classloader task. This is what I did.

<project basedir="." >
  <property environment="env"/>

  <taskdef resource="net/jtools/classloadertask/antlib.xml">
    <classpath>
      <fileset dir="${basedir}/lib" includes="ant-classloader*.jar"/>
    </classpath>
  </taskdef>

  <!--Add JSCH jar to the classpath-->
  <classloader loader="system">
    <classpath>
      <fileset dir="${basedir}/lib" includes="jsch*.jar"/>
      </classpath>
  </classloader>

  <target name="Test">
      <scp todir="user1:pass1@server1:/tmp" trust="true" >
        <fileset dir="dir1">
          <include name="test.txt" />
        </fileset>
      </scp>
   </target>
</project>

As you can see here, I didn't have to give any dependant target for my "Test" target, it just works. It uses classloader, which appends jsch.jar to the system classloader.

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Java – How to get the path of a running JAR file

return new File(MyClass.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation()
    .toURI()).getPath();

Replace "MyClass" with the name of your class.

Obviously, this will do odd things if your class was loaded from a non-file location.

Java – ant, jar files, and Class-Path oh the

This is all you need:

<path id="build-classpath">
    <fileset dir="${dist}/lib">
        <include name="*.jar"/>
    </fileset>
</path>
<manifestclasspath property="lib.list" jarfile="${dist}/lib/myprog.jar">
    <classpath refid="build-classpath"/>
</manifestclasspath>
<jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/myprog.jar"
     basedir="${build}"
     includes="com/my/prog/**" >
    <manifest>
        <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.my.prog.MyProg"/>
        <attribute name="Class-Path" value="${lib.list}"/>
    </manifest>
</jar>

As you can probably see, it assumes you've compiled your Java classes and output them to ${build}. It also assumes you've copied your jarfiles to ${dist}/lib.

That said, it would be worth looking into other build systems which have built-in support for dependencies, such as Maven and Gradle. These other build systems have already thought through many common project structures and build operations, so you don't have to script everything down to the last detail.

Best Answer

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Java – How to get the path of a running JAR file

Java – ant, jar files, and Class-Path oh the

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