Question

I have an Ant project that uses a bit of Coffee Script. I would like Ant to compile all of the coffee instead of having another build step to compile it. The coffee command line script that I want to use, that compiles all coffee files into synonomous js files (site.coffee compiles to site.js, app.coffee compiles to app.js):

coffee -c ./js/*.coffee

I created an Ant task that I assumed would run the same command, but am getting an error:

<target name="compilecoffee" description="Compiles coffeescript files">
    <exec executable="coffee">
        <arg value="-c ${env.WORKSPACE}js/*.coffee" />
    </exec>
</target>

Now when I run ant compilecoffee -Denv.WORKSPACE=./ I get the following error from Coffee:

Buildfile: /Users/dave/Workspace/ColdFusion/Mura-Themes/e123-1/build.xml

compilecoffee:
     [exec] 
     [exec] node.js:116
     [exec]         throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
     [exec]         ^
     [exec] Error: unrecognized option: -c ./js/3_site.coffee
     [exec]     at OptionParser.parse (/Users/dave/local/lib/node/.npm/coffee-script/1.1.1/package/lib/optparse.js:34:17)
     [exec]     at /Users/dave/local/lib/node/.npm/coffee-script/1.1.1/package/lib/command.js:245:29
     [exec]     at Object.run (/Users/dave/local/lib/node/.npm/coffee-script/1.1.1/package/lib/command.js:24:5)
     [exec]     at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/dave/local/lib/node/.npm/coffee-script/1.1.1/package/bin/coffee:7:27)
     [exec]     at Module._compile (module.js:373:26)
     [exec]     at Object..js (module.js:379:10)
     [exec]     at Module.load (module.js:305:31)
     [exec]     at Function._load (module.js:271:10)
     [exec]     at Array.<anonymous> (module.js:392:10)
     [exec]     at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:108:26)
     [exec] Result: 1

If I run, what I thought was, the coffee equivelant directly at the command line (coffee -c ./js/*.coffee) I get no errors and everything works as expected. Am I using the exec target wrong?

Answer 1

try =

<arg line="-c ${env.WORKSPACE}js/*.coffee" />

or use one arg value=… for every part of the command

<target name="compilecoffee" description="Compiles coffeescript files">
 <exec executable="coffee">
  <arg value="-c"/>
  <arg value="${env.WORKSPACE}js/*.coffee" />
 </exec>
</target>

coffee executable has to be on path or use =

<exec executable="full/path/to/coffee">

EDIT

as Dominic pointed out, the ‘*’ won’t be expanded, so you should use apply =

 <apply executable="coffee">
  <arg value="-c"/>
  <fileset dir="${env.WORKSPACE}js" includes="**/*.js"/>
 </apply>

see Ant Manual apply task f.e. you may use parallel=”true”, means run the command only once, appending all files as arguments, if possible with coffee, to speed it up.