Question

i have this ant build.xml file with 3 targets in it:

target1, target2 and target3.

If the user simply runs ant and not an explicit ant target1 or something like that, i want to prompt the user asking which target he would like to call.

Remember, the user should only be prompted for this only if he doesnt explicitly call a target while running ant

Answer 1

you may use the input task provided by ant and make it your default target.

<input
message="Please enter Target ID (1,2 or 3):"
validargs="1,2,3"
addproperty="targetID"
/>

Use the value of this property to decide which target to execute.

From the ant documentation:

message : The Message which gets displayed to the user during the build run.

validargs: Comma separated String containing valid input arguments. If set, input task will reject any input not defined here.
You may pass any arguments according to your needs.

addproperty : The name of a property to be created from input.Behaviour is equal to property task which means that existing
properties cannot be overridden.