Lesson learned in building optional.jar

[Skip Hovsmith <sk...@maplerise.com>]

Just thought I'd pass on a lesson learned in building optional.jar.

I wrap most java apps with a script which sets the appropriate classpath. My
default classpath is empty.

With ant 1.3, I built the source using 'ant install'. The ant script
included the jars it needed, but couldn't include the optional dependencies
such as junit.jar. The build install ran and completed successfully.

Next I fire up ant with a known build.xml file which dutifully sets
junit.jar when running the junit task. The junit task fails saying it can't
find the test runner. When I look for the test runner in optional.jar, it's
not there! After wondering (perhaps a mild understatement) how the ant
developers could leave the junit tasks out of optional.jar, I finally catch
on that the classes weren't added to the optional.jar because I didn't have
junit.jar on my classpath for the original build install. Obvious now, but
it sure tripped me up for a while...

The original build install probably output that it failed to build some of
the junit related classes, but I just saw the build completed okay message
at the end and mindlessly moved on.

So, if your optional.jar is missing some tasks, make sure you've added all
the optional dependency jars to your classpath before building ant or just
grab the optional.jar off the ant distribution.

Regards, Skip Hovsmith

Re: Lesson learned in building optional.jar

[David Rees <d....@usa.net>]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:16:18 -0800, Skip Hovsmith wrote:

>Just thought I'd pass on a lesson learned in building optional.jar.
>
>I wrap most java apps with a script which sets the appropriate classpath. My
>default classpath is empty.
>
>With ant 1.3, I built the source using 'ant install'. The ant script
>included the jars it needed, but couldn't include the optional dependencies
>such as junit.jar. The build install ran and completed successfully.
>
>Next I fire up ant with a known build.xml file which dutifully sets
>junit.jar when running the junit task. The junit task fails saying it can't
>find the test runner. When I look for the test runner in optional.jar, it's
>not there! After wondering (perhaps a mild understatement) how the ant
>developers could leave the junit tasks out of optional.jar, I finally catch
>on that the classes weren't added to the optional.jar because I didn't have
>junit.jar on my classpath for the original build install. Obvious now, but
>it sure tripped me up for a while...
>
>The original build install probably output that it failed to build some of
>the junit related classes, but I just saw the build completed okay message
>at the end and mindlessly moved on.
>

Nope, it doesn't give any warnings because Junit is "optional" ;).

>So, if your optional.jar is missing some tasks, make sure you've added all
>the optional dependency jars to your classpath before building ant or just
>grab the optional.jar off the ant distribution.
>

The problem is that you ran ant directly instead of using build.bat or
build.sh. They automatically add the optional jars to the class path
if it exists. Not sure why this doesn't happen in build.xml instead,
especially for junit.jar since its in the build.

d