In what order are Ant target's "if" and "depends" evaluated?

ant

Solution

Yes, the dependencies are executed before the conditions get evaluated.

From the Ant manual:

Important: the if and unless attributes only enable or disable the target to which they are attached. They do not control whether or not targets that a conditional target depends upon get executed. In fact, they do not even get evaluated until the target is about to be executed, and all its predecessors have already run.

Here is an example:

<project>
  <target name="-runTests">
    <property name="testSetupDone" value="foo"/>
  </target>
  <target name="runTestsIfTestSetupDone" if="testSetupDone" depends="-runTests">
    <echo>Test</echo>
  </target>
</project>

The property `testSetupDone` is set within the target in `depends`, and the output is:

Buildfile: build.xml

-runTests:

runTestsIfTestSetupDone:
     [echo] Test

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

Target `-runTests` is executed, even though `testSetupDone` is not set at this moment. `runTestsIfTestSetupDone` is executed afterwards, so `depend` is evaluated before `if`.

Problem

That is, will calling the following target when testSetupDone evaluates to false, execute the targets in dependency chain? ``` <target name="-runTestsIfTestSetupDone" if="testSetupDone" depends="-runTests" /> ```

Original source