Question

I have created an ant project which has some targets inside. One target is called info, which displays all available targets. This target is set as the default:

<project name="XXX" basedir="." default="info">

Now I want this target to be called in case of target not found:

Target "infp" does not exist in the project "XXX"

I need this in case the user calls a target that doesn’t exist. Then I want the info to be displayed, so that he sees all the available options.

Thanks

Answer 1

ANT does not support this functionality. The “default” target is called if no target is specified on the command line.

Instead I would suggest making your build self describing and teaching your users about ANT
‘s -p option.

Example

The following build file:

<project name="demo" default="welcome">

    <description>
    The purpose of this build file is to explain how one
    can make an ANT file self describing
    </description>

    <target name="welcome" description="Print a hello world message">
        <echo message="hello world"/>
    </target>

    <target name="do-somthing" description="Print a dummy message">
        <echo message="hello world"/>
    </target>

    <target name="do-somthing-silent">
        <echo message="hello world"/>
    </target>

</project>

Can describe itself as follows:

$ ant -p
Buildfile: /home/mark/build.xml

    The purpose of this build file is to explain how one 
    can make an ANT file self describing

Main targets:

 do-somthing  Print a dummy message
 welcome      Print a hello world message
Default target: welcome