Call Ant jar target from Gradle build file

Question

How can I call the Ant target 'jar' from the Gradle build file? I've tried a number of things to no avail. Renaming the 'jar' target in the Ant build file is not an option. I'm in the process of converting an Ant based build system to Gradle and the first required step is to call all the Ant targets from Gradle.

The 'jar' task is a default Gradle task so I'm overwriting/overriding it but I need to call my similarly named Ant target.

Gradle build.gradle file:

// Prevents error "Cannot add task {taskname} as a task with that name already exists"
ant.project.addTarget('clean', new org.apache.tools.ant.Target())
ant.project.addTarget('jar', new org.apache.tools.ant.Target())
ant.project.addTarget('test', new org.apache.tools.ant.Target())
ant.project.addTarget('javadoc', new org.apache.tools.ant.Target())

ant.importBuild 'build.xml'

task jar(overwrite: true) {        
    println 'jar'
}

task clean(overwrite: true) {        
    println 'clean'
}

task test(overwrite: true) {
    println 'test'
}

and my Ant build.xml:

<target name='jar' description='jar'>
    <echo>Called jar task in ant build</echo>
</target>

Running Gradle v1.2

------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 1.2
------------------------------------------------------------

Gradle build time: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 10:46:02 AM UTC
Groovy: 1.8.6
Ant: Apache Ant(TM) version 1.8.4 compiled on May 22 2012
Ivy: 2.2.0
JVM: 1.6.0_25 (Sun Microsystems Inc. 20.0-b11)
OS: Linux 2.6.37.6 amd64

Peter Niederwieser Peter Niederwieser · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-07T02:28:47

Gradle only adds a jar task when you apply the Java plugin, which you shouldn't do for the project into which you import the Ant build. I don't think you should ever call ant.project.addTarget from a Gradle build script.

Call Ant jar target from Gradle build file

1 Answers