Buildr and groovyc

Buildr is a build tool that iv mentioned in previous posts, its really flexible and easy to mold custom functionality into it due to its Ruby heritage and its AntWrap utilization.
In this post im going to demonstrate how to use the groovyc ant task in order to intruduce groovy compilation into your build (which is a bit tricky).
Lets dive head first into the code:

SP=File::SEPARATOR

desc "Dummy project"
define "Dummy" do
 #..
 def
  hashToPath(hash)hash[:group].gsub('.',SP)+SP+hash[:id]+SP+hash[:version]+SP+hash[:id]+'-'+hash[:version]+'.jar'
 end 

 def reslove_artifacts_paths(array)
    array.flatten.inject([]){|result,arti|  result << repositories.local+'/'+hashToPath(artifact(arti).to_hash)}.join(File::PATH_SEPARATOR)
 end
         
 desc 'compiling'
 compile.enhance([:groovyc])# this actully replaces the standart compile with the groovyc ant task
     
 desc 'groovyc task'
 task :groovyc do
  classpath=reslove_artifacts_paths(RUNTIME)
  ant('groovy') do |ant| 
    ant.taskdef :name=>'groovyc',:classname=>'org.codehaus.groovy.ant.Groovyc',:classpath=>reslove_artifacts_paths(GROOVY)
      ant.groovyc(:srcdir=>path_to('src', 'main', 'java') , :destdir=>path_to('target','classes') , :classpath=>classpath){
        ant.javac(:source=>"1.5" ,:target=>"1.5")
      }
     end
   end
 #.. 
end

The code above (if you havent guessed it until now) is the buildfile, lets disassemble it:

• The groovyc task uses AntWrap in order to define and use the groovyc ant task, notice that we are using joint compilation which in essence suppresses the default compilation (since there wont be anything left to compile when its turn arrives) and makes our life easier (no need to mess with the ordering of the compilation steps).


• The reslove_artifacts_paths method does what its name suggests and is required in order to make ant happy (i haven't found a nicer way of doing this) or else it wont find the required classes.


• the GROOVY constant points to the groovy-all jar the RUNTIME points to all that is needed during compilation.

That all about there is to it.