All: I originally posted this on the velocity-user list, then I found the development list. I think this topic is more appropriate for this list.
I ran across an issue with the build.xml file. When I use ant from the cygwin command line, it works great. However, I tried to use the ant build capability from within the netbeans development environment ( http://www.netbeans.org <http://www.netbeans.org> < http://www.netbeans.org <http://www.netbeans.org> > ), it did not work. I investigated and found the fundamental problem was that netbeans uses does not build the classpath the same way the shell script does, also netbeans sets the property build.sysclasspath = ignore as a default. When using the command line, ant.jar is placed in the classpath by the script, and the <javac> task seems to use the contents of the class path when compiling, unless build.sysclasspath=ignore is turned on. The suggestion from the netbeans users forum was the build.xml for velocity was not created in a portable way because it depended on the classpath being generated by the ant shell script for a successful compile. They suggested that the build script be set up such that the classpath for everything be explicit instead of implicit. This sounded like a good idea, however I'm not exactly sure how to implement it. I looked into modifying the build.xml, but I'm new to ant, so I was unable to get far. I'm not sure if the best way would be to use a property like ant.jar, or some other way of going about this. The biggest problem I see with using an ant.jar property is that the location is not known on each computer being used to build the system. Is there any way to "look" for the ant.jar needed? Could this be handled with a setting in the .ant. properties file? Another approach to this problem is using some special netbeans properties that are available. However, using this means that I would need to detect that ant is being run within netbeans. The properties set by netbeans are: ${netbeans.filesystems.path}. A classpath corresponding to your mounted Filesystems. ${netbeans.library.path}. A classpath containing libraries used by the IDE itself at runtime (such as ant.jar). ${netbeans.class.path}. The IDE's startup classpath. Not recommended for normal use. ${netbeans.bootclass.path}. The IDE's bootstrap classpath (from your JRE). Not recommended for normal use. Any suggestions about what I can do about this that could be submitted back to the project? Richard Hensley
