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| Developing tasks and types |
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| <h2> |
| Developing Ant tasks and types within Eclipse</h2> |
| <p> |
| Ant tasks and types must be loaded by an Ant classloader instead of a plug-in |
| classloader. This can cause problems when developing and testing new tasks and types |
| to be run in the same VM as Eclipse. To avoid these issues, it is necessary |
| to store the tasks and types in a location that is not visible to any plug-in |
| classloader.</p> |
| <p> |
| The following guidelines should be followed when developing and |
| debugging new tasks and types to be run within the same VM as Eclipse.</p> |
| <ul> |
| <li> Contributed Ant tasks or types should be defined in their own source folder |
| within a plug-in (i.e. separate from the source folders containing regular |
| plug-in classes)</li> |
| <li>Each source folder containing the Ant tasks and types should have its own |
| output location that does not overlap with the output location of the regular |
| plug-in classes.</li> |
| <li>When testing/debugging the new Ant tasks or types using PDE Launch, |
| additional configuration is required: |
| <ul> |
| <li>the project contributing |
| the Ant tasks or types must be configured to <b>exclude</b> the output folders |
| containing the Ant tasks and types. Use the <b>Properties</b> dialog for the project to |
| correctly configure the <b>Plug-in Development > Runtime Classpath</b> by removing the Ant output |
| directories from the plug-ins classpath.</li> |
| <li>The JAR file containing the Ant tasks and types and specified |
| in the org.eclipse.ant.core.extraClasspathEntries extension, |
| must be built manually, or using an external tool builder. |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| <p> |
| The <code>org.eclipse.ant.core</code> plugin can be used as an example of how to set up a plugin that contributes tasks within Eclipse. |
| For development and testing of this plugin within Eclipse, an external tool builder |
| explictly generates the tasks JAR when triggered on specific resource changes. |
| </p> |
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| <p>Also see <a href="ant_contributing_task.htm">Contributing tasks and types</a>.</p> |
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