source: release-kits/lirk3/bin/ant-installer/web/manual/manual/OptionalTasks/dotnet.html@ 14982

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initial import of LiRK3
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17<html>
18<head>
19<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../stylesheets/style.css">
20<title>.NET Tasks</title>
21</head>
22
23<h1>.NET tasks</h1>
24<h2>Introduction</h2>
25
26
27<p><strong>These tasks are deprecated and will be removed in a future
28release of Ant. They are now part of the <a
29href="http://ant.apache.org/antlibs/dotnet/index.html">.NET
30Antlib</a>.</strong></p>
31
32Ant support for .NET goes back to before .NET was released, and
33continues to be expanded based on user demand. Users writing nothing but
34a .NET application, may want to look at the .NET-based
35<A href="http://nant.sourceforge.net/">NAnt</A> project, that supports
36both the Microsoft and the Ximian managed <A
37href="http://go-mono.com/">Mono</A> project's implementation of the
38.NET framework.
39<p>
40
41Over time, the .NET tasks in Ant have tended to evolve to meet a few
42limited needs. Firstly, developers working with complex deployment problems may
43want to use ant to use the fairly advanced deployment tasks Ant ships
44with. Secondly, anyone who has a cross-platform project can use these
45tasks to cover the .NET side of the problem. Here, cross-platform can
46mean more than just Java and .NET: the C++ tasks in the ant-contrib
47project on sourceforge can be used with Ant to do native C++ and .NET
48cross development if that is your need. Finally, Ant support for .NET
49lets one automate .NET development under an automated build process,
50such as AntHill or Cruise Control.
51
52<p>
53
54What this means is that the Ant tasks for .NET support do not get as
55much rigorous use as the Java tools, and are evolving more slowly -that
56includes the time for support calls to change. But as a consequence,
57developers working on .NET support have more freedom to play around with
58the code. It also means that the fairly unusual set of tasks supported
59by ant enable a few interesting operations that can not be performed any
60other way:
61<ol>
62
63<li>Integrating with a Java based SOAP Service -generating C# code from
64the server's WSDL and running it against the server.
65</li>
66<li>Building and deploying a C#-based Web Service, then using the Apache
67Axis tasks to create JUnit tests to call the endpoints.
68
69<li>Patching .NET type libraries to work with more complex IDL than the
70basic <code>&lt;importtypelib&gt;</code> wrapper around tlbimport supports. Hence the
71disassembler and the reassembler.
72</li>
73
74</ol>
75Needless to say, possible does not mean easy.
76<A href="http://www.manning.com/hatcher/chap15.pdf">Chapter 15</A> of
77Java Development with Ant covers the first of these, using the Ant1.5
78version of the tasks. Going the other way -generating Java client
79code and JUnit testcases is covered in
80<A href="http://www.iseran.com/Steve/papers/interop/">The Wondrous curse
81of Interop</A>. The final trick, IDL and Typelib abuse, is not
82documented as we do not want to encourage such an ugly practise. It,
83can, however, be done if absolutely necessary.
84
85<h3>Task List</h3>
86
87<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
88<tr>
89 <td><b>Task</b></td>
90 <td><b>Description</b></td>
91</tr>
92<tr>
93 <td><a href="csc.html">csc</a></td>
94 <td>Compiles C# code</td>
95</tr>
96
97<tr>
98 <td><a href="vbc.html">vbc</a></td>
99 <td>Compiles VB.NET code</td>
100</tr>
101
102<tr>
103 <td><a href="jsharpc.html">jsharpc</a></td>
104 <td>Compiles J# files</td>
105</tr>
106
107<tr>
108 <td><a href="ildasm.html">ildasm</a></td>
109 <td>Disassembles .NET executables and libraries</td>
110</tr>
111
112<tr>
113 <td><a href="ilasm.html">ilasm</a></td>
114 <td>Assembles .il files</td>
115</tr>
116
117<tr>
118 <td><a href="wsdltodotnet.html">wsdltodotnet</a></td>
119 <td>Generates .NET code (C# or VB) from a WSDL file</td>
120</tr>
121
122<tr>
123 <td><a href="importtypelib.html">importtypelib</a></td>
124 <td>Imports a COM type library into .NET</td>
125</tr>
126
127</table>
128
129<hr>
130<h3>Common .NET Datatypes </h3>
131
132There are some datatypes that are common to the core compiler classes:
133csc, vbc and jsharpc
134
135<h4>Resource</h4>
136
137This is a resource that is included in the build. Ant uses this for
138dependency checking -if resources included this way have changed, the
139executable or library will be rebuilt.
140<p>
141<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
142 <tr>
143 <td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
144 <td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
145 <td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
146 </tr>
147 <tr>
148 <td valign="top">File</td>
149 <td valign="top">the resource to include</td>
150 <td align="center" valign="top">Yes</td>
151 </tr>
152 <tr>
153 <td valign="top">name</td>
154 <td valign="top">the name of the resource.
155 Optional unless the resource is
156 marked as public or private</td>
157 <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
158 </tr>
159 <tr>
160 <td valign="top">embed</td>
161 <td valign="top">flag to control whether the resource
162 is embedded in the assembly, or just linked to it</td>
163 <td align="center" valign="top">No -default is true</td>
164 </tr>
165 <tr>
166 <td valign="top">public</td>
167 <td valign="top">VB only: flag to control if a resource should be
168 public or private. Set to true for public, false for private
169 and leave undefined for for neither. </td>
170 <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
171 </tr>
172</table>
173
174<h5>Examples</h5>
175
176<pre>
177&lt;resource file="app.ico" name="icon"/&gt;
178&lt;resource file="splash.jpg"/&gt;
179&lt;resource name="splash" file="splash.jpg" public="false"/&gt;
180</pre>
181
182<h4>Define</h4>
183
184This is a definition; in .NET these can either be defined or undefined,
185unlike C++ #defines, which can be either undefined or arbitrary text.
186The Ant compilation tasks can unconditionally add definitions, or
187conditionally set a compile-time definition if an ant property is
188defined or not.
189<p>
190
191Dependency Logic: the tasks are not (yet) clever enough to remember what
192the last definitions were and trigger a rebuild when they change. Clean
193build the code when the defines are likely to be different.
194<p>
195<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
196 <tr>
197 <td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
198 <td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
199 <td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
200 </tr>
201 <tr>
202 <td valign="top">name</td>
203 <td valign="top">the name of the definition</td>
204 <td align="center" valign="top">Yes</td>
205 </tr>
206 <tr>
207 <td valign="top">if</td>
208 <td valign="top">name of a ant property to test for;
209 the definition is only set if this property is defined.</td>
210 <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
211 </tr>
212 <tr>
213 <td valign="top">unless</td>
214 <td valign="top">name of a ant property to test for;
215 the definition is only set if this property is undefined.</td>
216 <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
217 </tr>
218</table>
219
220<h5>Examples</h5>
221
222<pre>
223&lt;define name="unsafe"/&gt;
224&lt;define name="debug" if="build.debug"/&gt;
225&lt;define name="dotnet" unless="build.mono"/&gt;
226</pre>
227
228<hr>
229<h3> Change Log </h3>
230
231<h4>Ant1.6</h4>
232This revision goes along with NET 1.1, though there is no reason why
233it should not work on other versions.
234<p>
235
236<ol>
237<li>vbc task</li>
238<li>jsharpc task</li>
239<li>mono support</li>
240<li>ilasm</li>
241<li>tlbimport</li>
242<li>Reference filesets in the compiler tasks</li>
243<li>definitions in the compiler tasks</li>
244<li>multiple source filesets in the compiler tasks. If these are used, the
245implicit fileset is disabled</li>
246</ol>
247
248The compile tasks: vbc, jsharpc, and csc, all contain lots of common code
249in a shared base class: if you can use one you should be able to use
250another.
251
252<h4>Ant 1.5</h4>
253This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
254<ol>
255<li>CSC: added filealign</li>
256<li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
257<li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
258<li>WsdlToDotnet written
259</ol>
260
261<h4>Version 0.5</h4>
262This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
263<ol>
264<li>CSC: added filealign</li>
265<li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
266<li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
267<li>WsdlToDotnet written
268</ol>
269
270<h4>Version 0.4</h4>
271This is the beta-2 revision of the tasks.
272<ol>
273<li>ILASM: pulled the owner attribute, added keyfile for giving binaries a strong name
274(MD5 hash of the checksum)</li>
275<li>CSC: added win32res , noConfig, utf8output, fullpaths</li>
276<li>CSC: </li>
277</ol>
278
279<h4>Version 0.3</h4>
280
281The changes here reflect Beta-1 of the dotnet SDK and experience of use in
282more complex projects. This build does not work with the older SDK,
283primarily because the automatic reference feature references libraries
284only found in the new SDK version.
285<p>
286External changes</p>
287<ul>
288<li>Recursive inclusion of .cs and .il files</li>
289
290<li>Documentation enhanced, includes examples and details of all parameters</li>
291
292<li>The csc task automatically includes the common dotnet assemblies, so
293there is no need to remember to refer to 'System.dll', 'System.Web.Services',
294 etc. This feature can be disabled by setting the 'includeDefaultReferences'
295 flag to false. </li>
296
297 <li> References can also be referred to using the ReferenceFiles parameter, which
298is an ant path specification. The old 'references' string is still retained.</li>
299<li> An 'extraoptions' attribute enables the build file to include any CSC options
300which are not explicitly supported in the CSC task. </li>
301</ul>
302
303Internal changes
304<ul>
305<li>Some minor refactoring (move common code a method)</li>
306<li>Application of Jedits JavaStyle task resulted in a major reshaping of
307the codebase and the insertion of a blank line every second line. Significant
308effort was required to revert some (but not all) changes.</li>
309<li>Removed throws clause from methods which can't throw exception
310</ul>
311
312The test harness has been expanded to include unicode source file
313(the build works but the rest of the system has 'issues' with high unicode
314package and method names)
315
316<h4>Version 0.2</h4>
317First public edition, added to the ant cvs tree. Tested on the PDC build of
318the dotnet SDK only, and still immature. The command execution code was
319refactored out into a 'NetCommand' class for re-use. The Ilasm task was added
320at this time.
321
322<h4>Version 0.1</h4>
323Initial proof of concept; very rudimentary support for CSC only.
324
325</body>
326</html>
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