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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T23:59:05+00:00

I’m using org.apache.tools.ant.listener.Log4jListener to manage logging with my ant script. The ant script is

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I’m using org.apache.tools.ant.listener.Log4jListener to manage logging with my ant script. The ant script is highly configurable and designed to be run different ways with different parameters and therefore I need to be able to log to files specified at runtime. I have a log4j.properties which specifies a log file to be build.log, and despite my attempts to launch ant redefining properties defined in log4j.properties have been unsuccessful.

The build ignores them and continues to write to build.log. I haven’t found much support regarding writing to custom files unless it’s in Java with their Logger class.

Perhaps I’m thinking this through wrong. log4j.properties isn’t treated in the same way as a property file in an ant script (hence overrideable from the command line)? Is there a way I can do this intelligently without writing a custom task or something?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You setup your log4j.properties file using a system property that you can define dynamically on the command line. The property below is “${logfile.name}”. An example log4j configuration would be like this:

    # logfile is set to be a RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.logfile=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.logfile.File=${logfile.name}
log4j.appender.logfile.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.logfile.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.logfile.layout.ConversionPattern=[%-5p]%d{yyyyMMdd@HH\:mm\:ss,SSS}\:%c - %m%n

    The command line option to pass a property, when calling “ant”, is “-Dlogfile.name={runtime path/filename of log file}”. Replace {runtime path/filename of log file} with your file name. When ant is run this value is set as a system property. That system property is then substituted into the log4j.properties at runtime.

    http://ant.apache.org/manual/running.html

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