Questions re: "hierarchical builds" and search for build.xml "up" in tree

[Tom Johnson <td...@ajile.com>]

A few days back, Diane Holt wrote:

> Given that Ant now searches up through the tree, looking for the first
> "build.xml" file it finds, couldn't you be in either the dir that contains
> the sub-project's "build.xml", or any subdir down from there?

I must have misunderstood this, but my observation is that in Ant 1.2,
I have a build.xml file in, say c:\root\

and:

cd c:\root
ant build

etc. works fine

but if I do this:

cd c:\root\subdir
ant build
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!

Is there some special technique I should use to get this effect?
I see value in a single build file for multiple targets but developers are used
to invoking builds from the directory context where they're working.

Our builds are not that complex (yet) and I would like to start with something
that keeps the setup simple, then grow it to accomodate highest priority needs.

Regards,

--
Tom Johnson
Technical Staff
aJile Systems, Inc.     http://www.ajile.com/
tdjohnson@ajile.com     319 378 3941