Question

I have an ant task that contains javac task inside. It reports about error in one of the classes, but the build doesn’t fail, because it has failonerror=”false”. I suppose to see class files in the end of build, but I don’t see it. Can anybody tell me why?

Properties used:

checkout.path=work/workingcopy
classpath.path=work/build/classes
log.file=work/log.txt

Ant code:

<record name="${log.file}" action="start"/>     
<javac destdir="${classpath.path}" srcdir="${checkout.path}/src"
        debug="true" failonerror="false">
    <classpath>
        <path refid="webinf.lib"/>
        <path refid="tomcat.lib"/>
    </classpath>
</javac>
<record name="${log.file}" action="stop"/>

Log file:

[javac] Compiling 169 source files to C:\work\build\classes
[javac] C:\work\workingcopy\src\com\mycompany\exception\handlerException\CustomExceptionHandler.java:25: cannot find symbol
[javac] symbol  : class RequestContextImpl
[javac] location: package org.primefaces.context
[javac] import org.primefaces.context.RequestContextImpl;
[javac]                              ^
[javac] C:\work\workingcopy\src\com\mycompany\exception\handlerException\CustomExceptionHandler.java:103: cannot find symbol
[javac] symbol  : class RequestContextImpl
[javac] location: class com.mycompany.exception.handlerException.CustomExceptionHandler
[javac]             new RequestContextImpl(ec);
[javac]                 ^
[javac] Note: Some input files use or override a deprecated API.
[javac] Note: Recompile with -Xlint:deprecation for details.
[javac] Note: Some input files use unchecked or unsafe operations.
[javac] Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.
[javac] 2 errors
[javac] Compile failed; see the compiler error output for details.

Answer 1

The failonerror option is for Ant not for javac. So if failonerror=false then Ant will continue your task even javac returns an error.

From the docs:

failonerror Indicates whether compilation errors will fail the build; defaults to true.

The build is Ant’s build process not javac’s !