How to add dependency to Ant project

Question

I would like to add dependency to my Ant project; for example I want to add hibernate dependency to my project.

I'm new to Ant. Before I used maven tool to build project. in maven it is very easy to add dependency to pom.xml file.

My build.xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="Demo ANT Project-1" default="run">

    <target name="run" depends="compile">
        <java classname="com.company.product.RoundTest">
        <classpath path="staging"/>
        </java>
    </target>


    <target name="compile">
        <javac includeantruntime="false" srcdir="./src" destdir="staging" />
    </target>
</project>

I want to add dependency to above Ant xml file.

Solution

PLEASE NOTE: This question was asked and answered newly 6 years ago.

First of all Ant is older than Maven and therefore does not include core support for dependency management.

Adding ivy

Ivy is a dependency management framework for Ant

http://ant.apache.org/ivy/

To enable it you need to do two things. First include the ivy task namespace to the top of your build file:

<project .... xmlns:ivy="antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant">

A secondly you'll need to install the ivy jar into one of the standard locations that ANT uses for it's 3rd party extensions:

• $ANT_HOME/lib
• $HOME/.ant/lib

I like to make my builds standalone so include a target that does this for me automatically:

<available classname="org.apache.ivy.Main" property="ivy.installed"/> 

<target name="install-ivy" description="Install ivy" unless="ivy.installed">
    <mkdir dir="${user.home}/.ant/lib"/>
    <get dest="${user.home}/.ant/lib/ivy.jar" src="http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=org/apache/ivy/ivy/2.3.0/ivy-2.3.0.jar"/>
    <fail message="Ivy has been installed. Run the build again"/>
</target>

Using ivy

This is a very extensive subject, the following is a simple example to download the hibernate jar and it's dependencies:

<target name="resolve" depends="install-ivy" description="Use ivy to resolve classpaths">
    <ivy:cachepath pathid="compile.path">
      <dependency org="org.hibernate" name="hibernate" rev="3.2.7.ga" conf="default">
        <exclude org="javax.transaction"/>
      </dependency>
    </ivy:cachepath>
</target>

Produces the following output:

resolve:
[ivy:cachepath] :: Apache Ivy 2.3.0 - 20130110142753 :: http://ant.apache.org/ivy/ ::
[ivy:cachepath] :: loading settings :: url = jar:file:/home/mark/.ant/lib/ivy.jar!/org/apache/ivy/core/settings/ivysettings.xml
[ivy:cachepath] :: resolving dependencies :: #;working@mark
[ivy:cachepath]     confs: [default]
[ivy:cachepath]     found org.hibernate#hibernate;3.2.7.ga in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found net.sf.ehcache#ehcache;1.2.3 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found commons-logging#commons-logging;1.0.4 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found asm#asm-attrs;1.5.3 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found dom4j#dom4j;1.6.1 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found antlr#antlr;2.7.6 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found cglib#cglib;2.1_3 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found asm#asm;1.5.3 in public
[ivy:cachepath]     found commons-collections#commons-collections;2.1.1 in public
[ivy:cachepath] :: resolution report :: resolve 373ms :: artifacts dl 10ms
[ivy:cachepath]     :: evicted modules:
[ivy:cachepath]     commons-collections#commons-collections;2.1 by [commons-collections#commons-collections;2.1.1] in [default]
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    |                  |            modules            ||   artifacts   |
    |       conf       | number| search|dwnlded|evicted|| number|dwnlded|
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    |      default     |   10  |   0   |   0   |   1   ||   9   |   0   |
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------

This ivy managed classpath can then be used in your javac task

<javac includeantruntime="false" srcdir="./src" destdir="staging" classpathref="compile.path"/>

Comments

[jijesh Aj]

Any idea about this error.. D:\jijesh\workspace\Demo\build.xml:4: Problem: failed to create task or type antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant:resolve Cause: The name is undefined. Action: Check the spelling. Action: Check that any custom tasks/types have been declared. Action: Check that any <presetdef>/<macrodef> declarations have taken place. No types or tasks have been defined in this namespace yet

[Mark O'Connor]

@jijeshAj ANT is missing the ivy jar. That is the purpose of my "install-ivy" target. If the ivy class is not present it downloads it automatically.

[jijesh Aj]

i have download it and copied to ant/bin and users/.ant/lib folder.Still the error is showing.

[Mark O'Connor]

@jijeshAj ant/bin is no good. Needs to be $ANT_HOME/lib. Or $HOME/.ant/lib. Again try running the "install-ivy" task I supplied above. Ivy is just like any other ANT extension, it's jar must be in a location that ANT can find on startup

[user1324109]

The code sample here uses Ivy version 2.3.0. If you use that version today, you may get an error, "SERVER ERROR: HTTPS Required".