| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML> |
| <HEAD> |
| |
| <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2005. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." > |
| |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css"> |
| |
| <LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../book.css" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" TYPE="text/css"> |
| <title>Saving & Reusing Ant options</title> |
| |
| </HEAD> |
| <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"> |
| <h3>Saving & Reusing Ant options</h3> |
| |
| <P CLASS="Para">When we ran the HelloWorld.xml Ant buildfile in the last section, |
| the choice of targets, along with all other options in the Run Ant dialog were |
| saved in an entity called a 'launch configuration'. Launch configurations contain |
| all details necessary to run a single Ant buildfile in a particular way. It is |
| perfectly valid to have multiple launch configurations associated with a single |
| Ant buildfile. So, in addition to the launch configuration that was created in |
| the last step, specifying that our HelloWorld.xml buildfile should execute the |
| targets Hello & World in that order, we could create a second launch configuration |
| for this same buildfile specifying the same targets but in the reverse order. So |
| far so good. But the really nice thing about launch configurations is that now |
| you can quickly run your Ant buildfile in either configuration by simply specifying |
| the corresponding launch configuration.</P> |
| <ol> |
| <li>From the Workbench toolbar, select <b>Run > External Tools > External Tools...</b>.</li> |
| <li>The External Tools dialog opens and presents a choice of launch configurations |
| to view and edit. The launch configuration we created when we ran the HelloWorld.xml |
| buildfile is selected in the tree at the left, and the tabs on the right show |
| the options for this launch configuration.<br> |
| <img src="../images/et_dialog.png" alt="External tools dialog" border="0" > |
| </li> |
| <li>At the top of the dialog, change the Name to 'Hello World' and <b>Apply</b> |
| the change.</li> |
| <li>In the tree at left, bring up on the context menu on the selected launch |
| configuration and choose <b>Duplicate</b>. A copy of the launch configuration |
| for the Hello World buildfile is created, '(1)' is appended to the name, and |
| the new launch configuration is selected in the tree.</li> |
| <li>Rename the new configuration to 'World Hello'.</li> |
| <li>In the <b>Targets</b> tab, click the <b>Order...</b> button, change the |
| order of the targets so that the World target executes first, and <b>Apply</b> |
| the change.</li> |
| <li>Click <b>Run</b>.</li> |
| <li>As before, the HelloWorld.xml buildfile runs and sends its output to the |
| Console view. This time however, because the targets were reversed, the output |
| is reversed as well.</li> |
| <li>Go back to the External Tools drop down in the toolbar. <br> |
| <img src="../images/et_dropdown.png" alt="External tools drop-down menu" border="0" ><br> |
| Notice now that there are two entries in the history, one for Hello World |
| and one for World Hello. In order to rerun the Ant buildfile so that it outputs |
| Hello World, just select this launch configuration in the history. To rerun |
| the launch configuration that outputs World Hello, select this configuration |
| in the history.<br> |
| <strong>Note</strong>: The history is ordered so that the most frequently |
| run configurations are at the top of the dropdown.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <p>This concludes our quick look at the basics of Ant integration in Eclipse. |
| In the next chapters, we consider several real-world use cases for running Ant |
| buildfiles inside Eclipse.</p> |
| </BODY> |
| </HTML> |
