Use ant NoBannerLogger and -emacs options for better output (2)

In my previous post, I wrote about using ant options -emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger to strip out empty targets and task names. Here are more tips to save some typing:

1. define an shell-level alias to include these options.

In bash, add to $HOME/.bashrc:
alias ant='ant -emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger'

In tcsh, add to $HOME/.tcshrc:
alias ant 'ant -emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger'

On windows, create a ant.bat under a directory (e.g., C:\bin) that is in the PATH before %ANT_HOME%\bin:

@echo off
%ANT_HOME%\bin\ant.bat -emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger %*

2. If you don't like using alias, another option is to modify $ANT_HOME/bin/ant or %ANT_HOME%\bin\ant.bat to include these options. Change
ant_exec_args=
To
ant_exec_args="-emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger"

The drawback is, every time you reinstall ant, it's gone. Also note that you should only use either 1 or 2, but not both. Otherwise, ant will complain it can't use 2 loggers.

3. Yet another option is to define a shell variable to hold the ant options:

bash-3.00$ export anto="-emacs -logger org.apache.tools.ant.NoBannerLogger"
bash-3.00$ ant $anto test

Tags: ant, NoBannerLogger, ant options