How do I get the target as a property in Ant?

Question

Possibly one of those really terrible beginner questions where the manual will tell you everything, but, anyway, take this line below:

ant -Dfoo=bar buildme

in my build script, what is the property that holds "buildme"?

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427745/how-can-i-get-the-value-of-the-current-target-ant — Ed Randall, Jul 20 '11 at 11:50

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 00:03

The list of targets invoked is available in the property

ant.project.invoked-targets

If there is a default target specified, then that will be the invoked target. If one or more targets are specified on the command line, these appear comma-separated in the property. Note that the property only becomes set once execution passes to a target - if you try to read the property outside of any target, it will be unset.

So, if the project has a default target 'zero':

$ ant one two
# ant.project.invoked-targets is set to:
one,two

and

$ ant
# ant.project.invoked-targets is set to (default):
zero

For a full list of builtin properties, see: http://ant.apache.org/manual/properties.html#built-in-props — Dominic Mitchell, Nov 22 '10 at 20:32

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 25 '12 at 01:57

1

Seems like ant.project.invoked-targets is not available in ant 1.7.1

edited Jul 25 '12 at 01:57

Hailei

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answered Jul 24 '12 at 18:45

Jim Belton

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 13 '10 at 12:27

0

Not sure I understand your question, but "buildme" is the target to execute, not a property.

ant [options] [target [target2 [target3] ...]]

You "pick it" by creating the corresponding target:

<target name="buildme">
  <!-- tasks that will execute here -->
</target>

As for the foo property, you "pick it" by using ${foo}.

answered Oct 13 '10 at 12:27

Filipe Miguel Fonseca

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Hi Miguel, basically, I want to be able to retrieve the target parameters in my build script. I would expect something like ${target} to work, but unfortunately not. – Steve Griff Oct 13 '10 at 12:28
1

Oh... There's an old thread in ant says you can't do it =S http://markmail.org/message/rjgp2gm54kxnnqih – Filipe Miguel Fonseca Oct 13 '10 at 12:44
Thanks for the link Miguel, it looks like it's not possible. I only wanted the target parameter for a very minor reason. No problem. Thanks for your time. Steve. – Steve Griff Oct 13 '10 at 12:48
As a last resource you can always set a property inside each target with it's name =D – Filipe Miguel Fonseca Oct 13 '10 at 12:51

How do I get the target as a property in Ant?

3 Answers3