Hello,
Earlier today, I posted scripts to ant-user (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ant-user&m=104322316306620&w=2) for background command execution via <exec>. Installation just entails dropping the script files into ANT_HOME/bin. Then you just specify the <exec> task appropriately in your build.xml.
Unlike other solutions posted here which change the PumpStreamHandler and Execute classes, this one allows starting long lived processes that can remain running after the build file exits. It works by starting the desired command in such a way that all of stdin, stdout and stderr have been closed or redirected. Then, when the command is run in the background, PumpStreamHandler won't hold onto those streams allowing the command to continue running without Ant waiting for it to exit.
For this support on Windows, I used JScript (JavaScript) in Windows Scripting Host, a scripting environment included with Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. For Windows 95/NT, WSH can be downloaded from Microsoft. This seemed to me the best solution as Ant doesn't distribute binaries of any kind and I didn't want to try and be the first to try and start.
I suppose the next step might be to write wrapper tasks for this functionality which extend <exec> and <java> ant could work with 1.5. For 1.6, <exec> and <java> could be enhanced to use these scripts directly when the appropriate attribute is specified.
Thoughts?
-Bill
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