Question

I’m creating an installer using Ant and I’m facing a problem. I need to create a file with different extension depending on the platform (Unix or Windows) but I don’t know how to get the current platform from Ant.

Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance,
Joshua.

Answer 1

Is this something you’re attempting to do in a build.xml? The <condition> task supports the condition os which can help you determine the platform for your install script:

<condition property="is.windows">
   <os family="windows"/>
</condition>

Then you can split tasks into Unix and Windows:

<target name="deploy"
    depends="deploy.unix, deploy.windows">
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
</target>

<target name="deploy.unix"    
    unless="is.windows">
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
</target>


<target name="deploy.windows"
    if="is.windows">
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
    <yadda/>
</target>

The deploy target will call both deploy.unix and deploy.windows. However, the deploy.unix target will be skipped if it’s a Windows system and deploy.windows will be skipped if it’s not a Windows system.

And, if you’re using the <exec> task, you can also specify if you’re running Windows or Unix:

 <exec executable="${unix.program}"
     osfamily="unix"/>

 <exec executable="${windows.program}"
     osfamily="windows"/>