Question

I know how to run a single target in ANT, but it also checks the “depends” attribute and runs those before the target. Is there a way to prevent this or a way to structure my ANT file so that I can do this more easily?

Answer 1

Create a “withoutdeps” version of the target. If you had

<target name="A" depends="B">
   ...
</target>

Change to

<target name="A" depends="B,AwithoutDeps"/>

<target name="AwithoutDeps">
    ...
</target>

Now you can call A as normal (which will fire off B then AwithoutDeps) or just call AwithoutDeps explicitly and no deps fired. [Note that “depends” calls the dependencies in order]

Of course, choose some better names than these 😉