New to Ant - Problem with relative paths

ant, build.xml, eclipse, path

Solution

All Ant path will be relative to your current working directory.

So, check what directory you are running your script from.

I suggest that you start using `${basedir}` to get a path relative to a location of `build.xml`.

In your case, the relative path should be constructed like this: `${basedir}/../../core`, instead of `../../core`.

The inconsistencies you encounter illustrate a point why eclipse-generated ant scripts are a good starting point, but never a good project build system.

EDIT. I wonder why eclipse ant generator does not insert `${basedir}` in relative paths? Maybe you should report it as a bug.

Problem

Please help, I'm going slightly mad!! I'm using Eclipse-generated antfiles to build a project with dependencies, one of which has its own buildfile in a directory which is a sibling to the direct ancestor of the project I'm building. E.g. if my directory is "/base/modules/clinicalcontext", the directory of one of the dependencies is simply "/base/core". So, the generated build.xml uses ../../core which afaik is correct. But it is not!! From the console it is apparent that Ant goes back three levels and not just two (it gives FileNotFound on "/core/build.xml"). I tried to change the relative path to "../core" and much to my astonishment, this way Ant goes back by one level (it laments "/base/modules/core" being nonexistent). So how in the world I tell Ant t go back by two levels? I'd prefer to avoid using absolute paths, since I might have to move the project to a different machine someday. Thanks everybody.

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