Ant: The Definitive Guide
by Eric M. Burke, Jesse E. Tilly

The unconfirmed error reports are from readers.  They have not yet been 
approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the
opinion of the reader.

Here's a key to the markup:
        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification

This page was updated July 21, 2004.


UNCONFIRMED  errors and comments from readers: 


[3]  3;
In Chapter 1, the <project> tag in your build.xml contains a default of 'compile',
while (I think) the default should be 'all' (so that the build includes the jar
target, too). The way it is, only clean and compile would be executed, and no
oreilly.jar would be produced. The error is both in the book, and in the examples
download.


{3}  target name = "jar";
The description for this target states that oreilly.jar is
placed in the 'dist' directory.  As Figure 1.2 properly
shows, oreilly.jar is placed in the 'lib' directory.

Note that a change in this description will affect the result
of -projecthelp as displayed at the top of page 7.

Also note that this error exists in the actual buildfile.


{17}  First code example;
The example of setting ANT_OPTS, will not work with Windows 98 because W98 does not
permit equals signs to be in the value string. In other words, commands like:

      set ANT_OPTS=-Dlog.dir=mydir

are syntax errors in W98.


{28}  Figure 3-1;
Figure 3-1 is supposed to represent the directory structure
of the irssibot example.  The /build directory is shown as
having four subdirectories: /lib, /bin, /doc, and /irssibot.

But the build.xml buildfile and the downloaded example code
show that one subdirectory under /build must be /classes, with /irssibot a
subdirectory of /classes.


{31}  Third code snippet (after paragraph 3);
The line
<property name="javac.debug" value="on"/>

should be
<property name="debug.flag" value="on"/>

The flag is referred to as debug.flag throughout the rest of the chapter and in the
final example.


{41}  1st paragraph;
The sentence: "Errors, however, occur within two distinct phases during the
processing of an element, and understanding these phases alleviates some
frustrations."

1. The sentence is about twenty words long.  Clearly - "Understanding the two phases
alleviates some frustrations. " could be an independent sentence.

2. Splitting occur and during apart in the sentence makes it very hard to read.
Better would be "Errors, however, occur chronologically within two distinc phases of
processing."

3. I don't believe it is the processing of an element per se.  I believe it is the
proceesing of a build file.


{68}  first code example;
The line

<patternset refid="${xml.files}"/>

is not correct.
It must be modified to

<patternset refid="xml.files"/>


[68]  3rd paragraph;
Note that in the example, the execution line:

$ ant -Dincludetests=true compile

implies that the similar command:

$ ant -Dincludetests=false compile

will not compile the tests, however, this is untrue.  You may want to add a "trap"
section here explaining that anytime "includetests" is set, regardless of value or
location, the test sources will be compiled.  This holds true with any of the
conditional attributes (if or unless on patternset or target).


{78}  last line;
The fully qualified class name for MatchingTask is incorrect. I had a look at ant
1.4.1 and ant 1.5 and it should be:
  org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.MatchingTask
not
  org.apache.tools.ant.main.taskdef.MatchingTask


{103} the make directory
task reads:

	<mkdir name="${build.dir}"/>

"Name" is not an attribute of the mkdir task; the proper attribute name is
"dir". The task should read:

	<mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>


[254]  bottom example;
I tried to use the example at the bottom under the "Using Ant to Consolidate
Libraries" in my own buildfile but the ant compiler tells me that:

The <jar> task doesn't support the "destdir" attribute.

and according to the description of jar, that is correct


{257}  2nd line;
the attribute for property tag is not *name* but *file*


[263]  Symbols;
The backslash, forward slash, and semicolon are listed as on page xv when in reality
they are on xvii.


[263]  Symbols  "/";
The forward slash is identified as a path separator on page 24 and the reference is
missing from the index.