I'm having a perplexing problem and I'm hoping someone here can help
me understand whatever I'm missing. I was moderately fluent with Ant at
one point but I've been away from it a while and have probably just
forgotten some fundamental that I need to know.
Here's the deal. I have an Ant script that is displaying an AntForm. The
AntForm contains some checkboxes that are supposed to make me keep or
omit three particular paragraphs in a document I am writing later in the
script. Basically, I use the AntForm to set specific booleans, one for
each of the three paragraphs, in a Java source file to true or false.
Then, I generate the document with a program that I've written and that
program either writes the specified paragraphs or omits them based on
the values of the booleans. At least, that's what's SUPPOSED to happen.
In reality, the booleans are being seen by the program that generates
the document as true regardless of what has been done with the AntForm.
Therefore, all three special paragraphs always appear in the document
even when I've asked for some or all of them to be omitted.
This baffles me because I actually display the contents of the Java
source file to myself in the Ant script before and after the execution
of the program that generates the document and the values of the three
booleans and they have the correct values. For instance, I can set the
three booleans to false, true and false respectively via the AntForm and
that's exactly how they appear in the Java source file just before I
generate the document. (Then I reset the values to their defaults (all
three true) then display them to myself and they are all true.) However,
when I write the values of the booleans within the program that is
generating the document, they are invariably all true, even if they have
been set to different values.
I don't understand why I'm getting this misbehaviour.
My working theory is that Ant is NOT executing the tasks within the
script in the expected order. When I add the -verbose and -debug
parameters to the Ant Build, I see something that the task that displays
the AntForm is done in its proper sequence, namely first within the
script. However, the tasks that are to be executed to change the values
of the booleans are NOT executed immediately after the AntForm is
displayed but after the compile of the Java code. The script is
displaying the AntForm and letting me check the checkboxes as I like,
then compiling the code and ONLY THEN actually editing the source file
to set some of the booleans to false. I think this explains why the
switches are always seen as true by the document-generating program: the
generator is simply not getting the edited version of the source file.
Can anyone confirm that my theory makes sense? Or, if it doesn't,
suggest a better explanation? If I'm on the right track, what is it that
I'm not understanding about the execution sequences of tasks within
targets? I had assumed that each task within a target would be executed
before tasks in other targets were started....
--
Rhino
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