Scripting in Ant

| | bookmark | email
Today I had to create an automatic build for a Tuxedo Server. It requires the following steps:
  • generate sources from header files
  • compile each source with Cobol compiler
  • link all obj files into a dll
. For I moment I have thought that a rapid bat file will solve my problem, but I wasn't able to figure out how to obtain a list of header files from a directory. I have tryed the following:
 set LIST=
 for %%i in (*.ext) do set LIST=%LIST% %%i
but it didn't work. After a while I have found out that I should enable delayed variable extensions and the above lines would become:
  set LIST=
  for %%i in (*.ext) do set LIST=!LIST! %%i
At this step I wasn't sure I want to continue, so I have decided to switch to Ant. Here obtaining the list of files was an easy one pathconvert did my job immediately. But I have faced a second problem: how should I pass each generated file to the Cobol compiler. The solution I have found (and I don't know if it the unique one - give me hints if you have) was to use a script task. After downloading BSF and Rhino in a few lines I have solved my problem. Again Ant proved it's a great tool for building projects. I would appreciate any other possible solution.