Fast-paced dev Ant build file

live-build.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<project default="launch" name="live-sdmx-datacube" basedir="/Users/Will/Projects/datalift-sdmxdatacube/sdmxdatacube">

	<!-- ================ Property Definitions ============================== -->

	<property name="tomcat.home" value="/Library/Tomcat"/>
	<property name="tomcat.datalift" value="${tomcat.home}/webapps/datalift/"/>
	<property name="tomcat.bootstrap" value="${tomcat.home}/bin/bootstrap.jar"/>
	<property name="tomcat.port" value="8080"/>
	<property name="tomcat.server" value="localhost"/>
	<property name="tomcat.url" value="http://${tomcat.server}:${tomcat.port}"/>
	<property name="tomcat.username" value="tomcat"/>
	<property name="tomcat.password" value="tomcat"/>


	<property name="datalift.home" value="/Library/Datalift/datalift-home"/>
	<property name="datalift.modules" value="${datalift.home}/modules"/>

	<property name="module.name" value="sdmxdatacube"/>
	<property name="module.jar" value="${basedir}/dist/${module.name}.jar"/>
	<property name="module.url" value="${tomcat.url}/datalift/${module.name}"/>

	<property name="tomcat.msg.start" value="Tomcat started"/>
	<property name="tomcat.msg.stop" value="Tomcat stopped"/>
	<property name="tomcat.msg.reload" value="Tomcat reloaded"/>

	<!-- ================ Import main build.xml ============================== -->
	<import file="${basedir}/build.xml"/>

	<!-- ================ Catalina and Ant mix ============================== -->
	<path id="catalina-ant-classpath">
    <fileset dir="${tomcat.home}/lib">
      <include name="catalina-ant.jar"/>
    </fileset>
    <!-- This one is enough for Tomcat 6. Tomcat 7 needs more : -->
    <!-- http://paulgrenyer.blogspot.fr/2011/11/catalina-ant-for-tomcat-7.html -->
	</path>

	<taskdef name="catalina-reload" classname="org.apache.catalina.ant.ReloadTask" classpathref="catalina-ant-classpath"/>

	<!-- ================ Target Definitions ============================== -->
	<!--
		Deploy only reloads part of the HTML rendering (templating or static).
		It is necessary to reload (approx. 20s) to render Java modifications.
	 -->
	<target name="deploy" depends="live-dist, transfer"/>
	<target name="redeploy" depends="deploy, reload"/>
	<target name="launch" depends="deploy, start, open"/>

	<!-- ================ Module deployment ============================== -->
	<!--
  		We must first compile our new module using its own Ant build file.
  		Then transfer the resulting JAR to our deployment directory.
  	-->
	<target name="live-dist">
		<antcall target="dist"/>
	</target>

	<target name="transfer">
		<copy file="${module.jar}" todir="${datalift.modules}" overwrite="true"/>
	</target>

	<!-- ================ Tomcat management ============================== -->
	<!--
		We have to wait for Tomcat to stop / start before proceeding.
		Tomcat is launched with a specific JVM arg for Datalift.
		We add notifications with say and growlnotify.
	 -->
	<target name="start">
		<java jar="${tomcat.bootstrap}" fork="true" spawn="true">
			<jvmarg value="-Dcatalina.home=${tomcat.home}"/>
			<jvmarg value="-Ddatalift.home=${datalift.home}"/>
		</java>
		<waitfor maxwait="10000" checkevery="1000">
			<http url="${module.url}"/>
		</waitfor>
		<exec executable="say" spawn="yes">
			<arg line="${tomcat.msg.start}"/>
		</exec>
	</target>

	<target name="stop">
		<java jar="${tomcat.bootstrap}" fork="true" spawn="true">
			<jvmarg value="-Dcatalina.home=${tomcat.home}"/>
			<arg line="stop"/>
		</java>
		<waitfor maxwait="3000" checkevery="1000">
			<not>
				<socket server="${tomcat.server}" port="${tomcat.port}"/>
			</not>
		</waitfor>
		<exec executable="say" spawn="yes">
			<arg line="${tomcat.msg.stop}"/>
		</exec>
	</target>

	<target name="reload">
		<catalina-reload  url="${tomcat.url}/manager" username="${tomcat.username}" password="${tomcat.password}" path="/datalift"/>
		<exec executable="say" spawn="yes">
			<arg line="${tomcat.msg.reload}"/>
		</exec>
	</target>

	<!-- ================ URL opener ============================== -->
	<!--
		Opens the given URL into the default browser.
		Useless if using LiveReload (set to  source code).
	-->
	<target name="open">
		<exec executable="open" spawn="yes">
			<arg line="${module.url}"/>
		</exec>
	</target>

</project>

To not have to use the command line, we use LiveReload.
LiveReload monitors our module's source code and automatically triggers browser refresh each time a modification is detected. We're going to use it to fully automate our workflow :

• At any modification inside the web directory, LiveReload will execute ant -buildfile live-build.xml deploy, which will update the JAR file.
• At any modification inside the java directory, which requires Tomcat to be reloaded, we'll launch ant -buildfile ../../live-build.xml reload.

All that's left to do is tell LiveReload to focus on .vm (Velocity template) and .java files and the update process will be triggered at each file save.