[DERBY-4548] would like an alternative location for ant.properties

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 10.0.2.2, 10.1.3.3, 10.2.2.1, 10.3.3.1, 10.4.2.1, 10.5.3.1, 10.6.1.0
• Fix Version/s: 10.1.3.3, 10.2.2.1, 10.3.3.1, 10.4.2.1, 10.5.3.1, 10.6.2.1, 10.7.1.1
• Component/s: Build tools
• Assignee: Myrna van Lunteren
• Reporter: Myrna van Lunteren
• Created: 11/Feb/10 21:06
• Updated: 29/Nov/10 14:21
• Resolved: 04/May/10 02:12

Description

The current build.xml directs ant to look for a file ant.properties in user.home.
This can get confusing when you have multiple versions on the same machine.
I've worked around this in the past by pointing ant at other directories with -Duser.home=..., but it would be easier to have another place set up - I don't really like changing user.home.

We could add another line to build.xml, e.g., for trunk's current build.xml:
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@

<!-- Set Properties -->
<!-- User settings -->
+ <property file="ant.properties"/>
<property file="${user.home}/ant.properties"/>
<!-- Set property lib dir -->
<property name="properties.dir" value="tools/ant/properties"/>

This would make ant look first for ant.properties in the same directory as the top level build.xml, and secondly for the one in user.home.

If the community agrees this would be ok, I'd like to make this change and backport it all the way to 10.0.
By having an additional place we'd not cause incompatibilities to other build processes (except if someone has put an ant.properties file in the top of the checked out tree).

If we do this, I think it's up to the developers to ensure that there's not 2 ant.properties files that are conflicting.