Develop Reference

Ant to Gradle: JUnit (4.11) Test conversion

I'm not very familiar with JUnit, but I'm attempting to translate an ant target that makes use of junit into the gradle equivalent. It's not going so hot, since I'm getting some failures on the gradle side -- I'm under the impression that it's due to inputs not being found somehow/somewhere, but I can't confirm, since it's not readily present in the ant target.
Here's the ant script:
<target name="testing">
<junit printsummary="yes" showoutput="yes">
<classpath refid="classpath"/>
<formatter type="xml"/>
<batchtest fork="yes" todir="someOutputLocation">
<fileset dir="${base}/testCode">
<include name="**/included.java"/>
<exclude name="**/excluded.java"/>
</fileset>
</batchtest>
</junit>
</target>
And here's (one of the variations) of my gradle attempt:
task testing(type:Test){
useJUnit()
testClassesDir = file("testCodeCompiled")
include '**/included.class'
exclude '**/excluded.class'
classpath = classpath
}
The two errors I get:
junit.framework.AssertionFailedError
java.lang.NullPointerException
The AssertionFailedError is supposedly caused by multiple JUnit dependencies, which I don't have. I import a local version of only junit-4.11.
I really don't know why it's not working, though I suspect it's due to some of gradle's complexities. I've seen people mention an ant-junit library, which I may try to use to at least replicate the results from within gradle.
EDIT: A thought occurs: I found JUnit within some of gradle's src files. By calling useJUnit(), I may be using that instead? If so, there could be a double dependency after all? Nope. Got rid of useJUnit() and the local jar separately. The former behaved as it did before whereas the latter exploded.
MORE INFO: The cause may likely be that the compiledTestCode is missing several of the directories/data that testCode contains. I probably have to copy over the relevant files. Alternatively, is there a way to make gradle's JUnit use .java files instead of .class?

For those of you wondering, the code is fine. I'm just dumb.

Why does Eclipse ant editor warn me

I am having some trouble (annoyance really) with ANT editor in Eclipse where it is displaying me a warning "Reference build.classpath not found." on the following block:
<target name="generate" depends="..., mvn-depends">
<taskdef name="xjc" classname="com.sun.tools.xjc.XJCTask">
<classpath refid="build.classpath" />
</taskdef>
...
</target>
With mvn-depends target looking like this:
<target name="mvn-depends">
<artifact:dependencies pathId="build.classpath">
<pom refid="my.pom" />
</artifact:dependencies>
</target>
The rest of the references to build.classpath in the build file are not throwing any warnings and the and build runs just fine without any errors, so it does not seem to be amounting to much.
Still, ignoring a warning makes me feel sort of dirty every time I have to edit that file. Specifically, not knowing if this is a bug in Eclipse ant build file validation code or a potential problem in the way the build file has been structured, that Eclipse has identified.
If anyone has any ideas on why this warning is being shown and whether it is safe to ignore or maybe even disable from preferences and would care to share that knowledge, I would definitely be grateful for the knowledge.
Edit:
As requested, here is an example of a reference to build.classpath that does not cause any warnings:
<javac deprecation="off" debug="on" source="1.7" target="1.7" encoding="UTF-8"
includeantruntime="false" memoryMaximumSize="512M" fork="true">
<classpath refid="build.classpath" />
</javac>

As the editor could recognize refids and other elements that Ant specifies, I guess that the editor does something similar to Ant's build file parsing process.
That is, parse this ant build file into a Project object, and references in <taskdef> may be checked, while <javac> may not.
Since the build.classpath is set during runtime and it is set by something other than things like <classpath>, Eclipse may not find it.
I don't have strong prove about this. But something can be done to make us know more.
First, copy the <javac> to the same target where the warned
<taskdef> exists, to see if the <javac> gets a warning;
Then, copy the <taskdef> to the same target where the presetdefed
<javac> exists, to see if the <taskdef> still gets a warning;
Third, in target "generate", comment out the <taskdef> part, and
check if the <xjc ... /> call gets a warning.
For the first one, I expect "NO", while for the other two, I expect "YES". Otherwise, my guess is wrong.
And it makes sense that it is just a warning -- things Eclipse can't find in editing time could exist during runtime.

Make sure you have given the path element location correctly as bellow.
<property name="dependencyfinder.home" value="C:/DependencyFinder"/>
<path id="dependencyfinder">
<pathelement location="${dependencyfinder.home}/lib/aaa.jar"/>
</path>
<taskdef classname="com.sun.tools.xjc.XJCTask">
<classpath refid="dependencyfinder"/>
</taskdef>
Note: DependencyFinder has a folder lib and lib has aaa.jar
Please check the bellow link for more information
Click here

Change working directory in ant junit task

I have a ant file that runs JUnits tests. These tests rely on a relative path to certain configuration files. I've tried to set the working directory for the batch test, but fail.
I want the working directory to be ${plugins.dir}/${name}
The JUnit part of the ant script:
<junit haltonfailure="no" printsummary="on" fork="true" showoutput="true" dir="${plugins.dir}/${name}">
<jvmarg value="-Duser.dir=${plugins.dir}/${name}"/>
<classpath>
<path refid="project.classpath"/>
<pathelement location="${plugins.dir}/${dependency}/#dot/"/>
<pathelement location="${plugins.dir}/${name}/" />
</classpath>
<formatter type="xml" />
<sysproperty key="basedir" value="${plugins.dir}/${name}"/>
<sysproperty key="dir" value="${plugins.dir}/${name}"/>
<batchtest todir="${junit.output}">
<fileset dir="${dir}">
<include name="**\*AllTests.class" />
</fileset>
</batchtest>
</junit>
I've googled and searched but the workarounds I've found have been to set the "dir", "sysproperty" or "jvmarg". As you can see I've tried them all :)
Is there a way to print the current dir in the tag? It doesnt support . That would allow me to verify if the dir is actually changed and to what.
One wildcard in this equation is that this is being run in Hudson that starts upp an eclipse process that starts antrunner. This is so we can run both junit and eclipse plugin junit tests. Shouldn't have anything to do with the problem I think.

I think you are right with setting the basedir property (see projects attributes). However, since it is a property of ANT (and not of the JVM) it is READ ONLY!
Does it effect other target if you set the basedir when calling your ant task? See Command Line reference.
ant -Dbasedir=somedir
Alternatively, span a new ant process to call your junit target. See the AntCall task or Ant task. Following examples assumes that the junit target contains your junit task. I used this task for other properties (never needed the basedir property so far.
<antcall target="junit">
<param name="basedir" value="${plugins.dir}/${name}"/>
</antcall>
<ant dir="${plugins.dir}/${name}" target="junit" />

I had the same scenario and in my case I saw that dir="...." is ignored if run in same jvm so I simply added fork='true' and it worked.
Quote from Apache's documentation site "dir - The directory in which to invoke the VM. Ignored if fork is disabled.". More here.

I'm using NetBeans. When I add to Ant properties (from Tools, Options, Java, Ant) work.dir=C:/MyWorkingDir/ it executes ant with the following command and changes the working dir to C:\MyWorkingDir:
ant -f D:\\workspace\\lib\\project -Dfork=true -Djavac.includes=com/myapp/MyTest.java -Dtest.includes=com/myapp/MyTest.java "-Dwork.dir=C:/MyWorkingDir/" test-single

Apache ANT Standalone GUI for easy execution of targets

Does anyone know of a GUI written for Apache ANT. We're looking into developing a GUI to execute some of our developer tools for some of the designers and artists on our team.
I found a couple on the Ant External website but most of them are used for creating ANT files not simply listing the public targets available.
http://ant.apache.org/external.html

The ANT forms project has some tasks that enable you to generate simple forms that can be used to invoke ANT targets.
Here's an example with three buttons:
<project default="menu">
<property environment="env"/>
<path id="runtime.cp">
<pathelement location="${env.ANTFORM_HOME}/lib/antform.jar"/>
</path>
<target name="menu">
<taskdef name="antmenu" classname="com.sardak.antform.AntMenu" classpathref="runtime.cp"/>
<antmenu image="${env.ANTFORM_HOME}/doc/images/logo-small.jpg" title="My simple form" stylesheet="${env.ANTFORM_HOME}/style.test">
<label>A short label with a few explanatory words concerning the menu at hand.</label>
<button label="Echo 1 target" target="echo1"/>
<button label="Echo 2 target" target="echo2"/>
<button label="Echo 3 target" target="echo3"/>
</antmenu>
</target>
<target name="echo1">
<echo>DO SOMETHING</echo>
</target>
<target name="echo2">
<echo>DO SOMETHING</echo>
</target>
<target name="echo3">
<echo>DO SOMETHING</echo>
</target>
</project>

Usually most of the GUI for Ant or Maven are part of the IDE. I use IntelliJ that has an excellent support for Ant and Maven. Lists all my goals and I easily view any of them.

Antelope is a pretty excellent standalone GUI.
http://antelope.tigris.org/

I always quite liked this project, its implemented with xsl and requires no other dependencies.
http://antprettybuild.sourceforge.net/

Run some or all sections of an ant file

Is there a way to specify an ANT file to run only one/some/all of its sections?

Split your build into appropriate targets so that you can call individual targets separately, and then you can specify the target you want to run from the command line.
Personally I like having "real" targets without any dependencies (which I can run independently) and then "fake" targets which are just dependent on the real ones, for convenience (e.g. "clean-build"). The alternative of having test depend on compile etc always ends up getting in the way for me :(

You can group targets together using dependencies:
<target name="A">
<target name="B">
<target name="C" depends="A,B">
runs
A, B, then C.
You can also chain these to arbitrary depth. For example you could create an empty target "D" that depends on A, B which will only run A and B.

<project....
<target name="all">
...
</target>
<target name="some">
...
</target>
</project>
run
ant all
or
ant some

Define appropriate targets in your build file and then run
ant 'target name'
to run that particular one. You will have to configure target dependencies such that the ones you want to run separately can do so correctly.
It's a good practise to define these top-level targets with a description.
<target name="clean" description="Cleans up built artifacts">
Then you can run
ant -projecthelp
and this will display the targets with descriptions, thus telling you what targets are available. This will make life a lot easier further down the road, when you've forgotten what targets you've defined.