Question

I have looked through the nant documentation and sourceforge faq and can’t find the answer to this question. The exec task in nant puts ( ) around the command line parameters it generates, so for example this task below would generate:

mallow ( -1 )

    <exec program="${build.tools.wix}\mallow.exe"
  workingdir="${build.out.xxx}">
      <arg value="-1" />
    </exec> 

The other open source tool I’m using – mallow – cannot handle this.

Does anyone know of a way to stop nant putting the ( ) around the arguments?

Thanks.

Answer 1

NAnt does not actually put parentheses around the arguments, it just looks like that when you use verbose as in

<target name="test">
    <exec program="echo" verbose="True">
        <arg value="-1" />
        <arg value="0" />
        <arg value="1" />
    </exec>
</target>

from which the output is -1 0 1, and not (-1 0 1) as it would be if you ran

echo (-1 0 1)

directly from the command line.