I’m re-working an ant build file that we’ve been using on our project for a long time. It’s starting to get large and unwieldy with lots of targets and properties. I want to extrapolate and break it down into smaller files.
Since I’m fairly new to ant, I’m wondering
what’s the most commonly used way of splitting build.xml files into smaller pieces?
I’d like to do it in the most clean, easy to follow method possible, keeping only related targets/properties in each file.
So, for instance, all targets/properties related to compiling will go in one file, all related to logging will go an another and all related to deploying will go in a third. Thereby, the build.xml file will get cut into 3, smaller files that are much easier to chew on.
A combination of Ant macros and antlibs will not only reduce your build scripts but also hide away all the complexity.
For an example, you can take a look at my pet project. The Antlib files are packed inside a jar file, placed in the Ant’s lib directory.