Ant: The Definitive Guide

Name

antcall

Synopsis

Invokes a target in the current buildfile. Properties are passed to the new target using nested <param> elements. An investigation of the Ant source code reveals that antcall instantiates and calls the ant task using the current buildfile. This means that a new project instance is created and properties work the same as they do for ant.

Attributes

inheritall (1.4, boolean, N)

Defines how properties are propagated to the new target. Defaults to true, meaning all properties in the current build process are inherited by the new target. Prior to Ant 1.4, this was the only behavior. When false, properties set by users on the command line are the only ones passed to the new target.

target (all, String, Y)

The name of the target to call.

Content

0..n nested <param> elements (all)

Passes a property to the new build process. Each <param> element is implemented using the same class as the property task; all property attributes are applicable.

Example Usage

Call the cleandir target and specify the dir-to-clean property:

<target name="clean">
  <antcall target="cleandir">
                      <param name="dir-to-clean" value="javadocs"/>
                    </antcall>
</target>

Delete a directory specified by the dir-to-clean property:

<target name="cleandir">
  <delete dir="${dir-to-clean}"/>
</target>

See Also

See the property task for allowable attributes on nested <param> elements.