Compiling Using Ant

Apache Ant integration

IzPack can be easily integrated inside an Ant build process.

You need to have the following prerequisites installed on your local system:

• a Java runtime environment (Oracle, OpenJDK etc.), version 6 or above,
  Apache Ant will probably require the $JAVA_HOME environment variable to be set to it.
• a preinstalled version of the Apache Ant runtime (version 1.6.5 or above),
• the latest distribution installer of IzPack 5.

Here is how the Ant build file may look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project name="izpack" default="compile">
  
  <property name="izpack-dist" value="${user.home}/IzPack"/>
  <property name="izpack-installer" value="setup.jar"/>
  
  <path id="lib.path">
    <fileset dir="${izpack-dist}/lib" includes="*.jar"/>
  </path>
  
  <taskdef name="izpack"
           classname="com.izforge.izpack.ant.IzPackTask"
           classpathref="lib.path"
           />
  
  <target name="compile">
    <echo message="Makes the installer using IzPack to ${izpack-installer}"/>
    <izpack input="${basedir}/src/main/resources/install.xml"
            output="${basedir}/${izpack-installer}"  
            installerType="standard"              
            basedir="${basedir}/src/main/resources"
            izPackDir="${izpack-dist}"/>
    <echo message="${izpack-installer} created"/>
  </target>
  
</project>

• input: the XML installation file. The installation can be specified as an external file, or embedded using a config child element.
• output: the output jar installer file
• installerType: optional. standard or web. If web, the <webdir> attribute must be specified in the input file. Used to force creation of a standard installer when the <webdir> attribute has been used.

• inheritAll: optional, boolean. If true all properties defined in the ant build process are transmitted to izpack parser for substitution. 

• baseDir: the base directory to resolve the relative paths
• izPackDir: the IzPack home directory (the target directory when executing the izpack-dist.jar)

You can find a fully compilable example here:

Using the above example:

• Download the latest distribution installer and install it locally ($HOME/IzPack is assumed to be the installation directory).
• Unpack test.zip in a working directory of your choice.
• Call the Ant build (tested with Ant 1.9.6):
  cd test
ant

It builds an executable installer setup.jar in the working directory.

Embedding the installation file using a config element

Instead of using the 'input' attribute to specify an external installation document, you can embed the installation config as a child of the IzPack task using a config child element with a CDATA section. For example:

Property references of the form

are replaced by the associated x ant property if it is defined.