Error : Targets does not exist in the project

Question

I am working with our code base to solve some dependency problems.

However whenever I click over a build.xml file in any package I get

"Target XXX does not exist in the project" error. 

Interesting is that the build.xml file shows no error if I leave any of them untouched, but if I click to open any of them I am stuck with those errors. Here are some samples:

   <target name="javadoc" depends="compile-jar">
   <target name="release" depends="standard-release" description="PackageBuilder entry point"/>

I get errors for all the targets. Unfortunately I cannot post much code on a forum, but I would appreciated any suggestions to take me in the right direction. If there is something that I have not mentioned please let me know and I can add it.

Also, I do not understand very well how the entire build.xml and other ANT stuff works. I know there is good dcoumentation at http://ant.apache.org but I need some blog/book/diagrams/flowchart that explains how this works and how build dependecies are resolved in Java more easily, before the docs start making sense. Any help ?

Thanks.

Solution

Eclipse only checks the build.xml when you open them not before (like class files).

I would assume that standard-release and compile-jar are not defined in the specified build file, but in some other file?

In ANT you can import other build-files and reuse the targets from there:

See: http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/import.html

So maybe Eclipse does not find any imported file or you missed to define the import.