Describes the installation and usage of the Jalopy Ant Plug-in task.
Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, but without Make's wrinkles. Instead of a model where it is extended with shell-based commands, Ant is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell commands, the configuration files are XML-based, calling out a target tree where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object that implements a particular Task interface.
The Ant homepage can be reached under http://ant.apache.org/
Explains the steps involved in getting the Ant task up and running.
The Plug-in requires Ant 1.5 or later. See the section called "System requirements" for the basic requirements to run Jalopy.
The Plug-in comes as an executable Jar Archive (Jar) that contains a graphical setup wizard to let you easily install the software. Wizard installation is recommended and explained in detail in the section called "Wizard Installation".
If you would rather install the Plug-in manually, you have to decompress and copy the appropriate files into the different application folders. To decompress the contents of the installer Jar, you can either use the Jar tool that ships with your Java distribution or any other software that can handle the ZIP compression format (e.g. 7Zip or WinZip).
If you're upgrading from a prior version and want to keep your settings, first copy or rename the current Jalopy settings directory to match the version number of the new release. For instance, if your current settings directory is "C:\Documents and Settings\John Doo\.jalopy\1.0.4" and you're about to install Jalopy Help, either copy the directory contents or rename it to "C:\Documents and Settings\.jalopy\John Doo\Help". Wizard installation can perform this step automatically.
Remove any jalopy-Help.jar files from the /lib directory of your Ant installation.
Copy the files jalopy-Help.jar and jalopy-ant-Help.jar from the temporary directory into the /lib directory of your Ant installation.
If you don't have the Console Plug-in installed and want to be able to configure Jalopy from the command-line, copy the contents of the /bin folder from the temporary directory to the /bin directory of your Ant installation.
Before you can use the Jalopy Ant task in your build scripts, you have to add it to your system. Maybe the simplest way is to utilize the <taskdef> element in your build script as follows:
<taskdef name="jalopy" classname="com.triemax.JalopyTask" />