Ant: The Definitive Guide

Ant Command-Line Reference

The syntax to use to invoke Ant from the command-line is as follows:

ant [option [option...]] [target [target...]]

option := {-help
          |-projecthelp
          |-version
          |-quiet
          |-verbose
          |-debug
          |-emacs
          |-logfile filename
          |-logger classname
          |-listener classname
          |-buildfile filename
          |-Dproperty=value
          |-find filename}

The syntax elements are as follows:

-help

Displays help information describing the Ant command and its options.

-projecthelp

Displays any user-written help documentation included in the buildfile. This is text from the description attribute of any <target>, along with any text contained within a <description> element. Targets with description attributes are listed as “Main targets,” those without are listed as “Subtargets.”

-version

Causes Ant to display its version information and exit.

-quiet

Suppresses most messages not originated by an echo task in the buildfile.

-verbose

Displays detailed messages for every operation during a build. This option is exclusive to -debug.

-debug

Displays messages that Ant and task developers have flagged as debugging messages. This option is exclusive to -verbose.

-emacs

Formats logging messages so that they’re easily parsed by Emacs’ shell-mode; i.e., prints the task events without preceding them with an indentation and a [ taskname ].

-logfile filename

Redirects logging output to the specified file.

-logger classname

Specifies a class to handle Ant logging. The class specified must implement the org.apache.tools.ant.BuildLogger interface.

-listener classname

Declares a listening class for Ant to add to its list of listeners. This option is useful when integrating Ant with IDEs or other Java programs. Read more about listeners in Chapter 6. The specified listening class must be written to handle Ant’s build messaging.

-buildfile filename

Specifies the buildfile Ant should operate on. The default buildfile is build.xml.

-Dproperty=value

Defines a property name-value pair on the command line.

-find filename

Specifies the buildfile on which Ant should operate. Unlike the -buildfile option, -find causes Ant to search for the specified file in the parent directory if it is not found in the current directory. This searching continues through ancestor directories until the root of the filesystem is reached, at which time the build fails if the file is not found.