Question

I start studying ANT today in order to make Java compiling easier.
I wrote simple ANT script which only use javac command.

What I am trying is compile from …..\head_first\src\com\masatosan\constant.java (source)

to the destination directory:

…..\head_first\WEB-INF\classes\com\masatosan\conf

So the result would look like:

…..\head_first\WEB-INF\classes\com\masatosan\conf\constant.class

But I can’t figure out why the actual result adds “/com/masatosan/conf” directories to the destination folder, so it looks like:

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\head_first\WEB-INF\classes\com\masatosan\conf\com\masatosan\constant.class

Could anyone tell me how can I fix this?

ANT

<project name="CompileMasatosan" 
    basedir="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\head_first\src\com\masatosan">
    <description>
        masatosan compiler
    </description>
    <property name="confSrc" 
        location="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\head_first\src\com\masatosan\conf" />
    <property name="confDest"
        location="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\head_first\WEB-INF\classes\com\masatosan\conf" />

    <target name="compileConfSrc">
        <javac srcdir="${confSrc}" destdir="${confDest}" />
    </target>
</project>

UPDATE

I didn’t know complier creates directories based on the package name.

The package name of constant.java was com.masatosan.conf so that complier creates “/com/masatosan/conf/”

Answer 1

You’re trying to tell ANT to change the package because you want Constant.class to be under the com.masatosan.conf package rather than the com.masatosan package. The Ant compilation process will create the appropriate package subdirectories, which is why you see com\masatosan created under the dest.

I don’t think you can tell ANT to change the package of a source file, which is what you’re trying to do by injecting an extra conf dir. You can either create a conf dir and have a conf\com\masatosan\constants.class or put it under classes\com\masatosan\constants.class, but you can’t do com\masatosan\conf\constants.class since that changes the package of constants.class to com.masatosan.conf

Or simply change the package of constants.class to com\masatosan\conf and change your ant file to to:

<property name="confDest"
location="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\head_first\WEB-INF\classes" />