CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javanetbeansnetbeans-7
user3080873
user3080873

Reputation: 65

Add working directory to build

I am having trouble adding dependancies that are located in my working directory, to my .jar. When I try to run the .jar from command line I get errors saying that files I am attempting to access do not exist. Why does netbeans not include the working directory in the build dependancies, seems like a pretty easy and obvious thing to do....

I am simply trying to read a file, located at res/settings/settings.txt. I have made my working directory the res folder so that in netbeans I access that file successfully through 'settings/settings.txt'. I attempted to make the settings folder a library so it would be added to the build, however it refused to copy it because it was a directory.

How can I add this file to the build so i can run it from command line?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 187

Answers (1)

MadProgrammer
MadProgrammer

Reputation: 347204

Why should it? The working directory is simply a "test" location for your application. The build process is not a "packaging" process.

Netbeans provides you with a build.xml file which can you can modify to perform custom actions, but consider this, each time you build your application, these custom build actions/targets could be executed. That could add considerable time to your build process. If you're just making small changes, this might not be desirable.

Two solutions then come to mind.

  1. You could create custom build targets within the build.xml file which you would need to trigger by right-clicking the build.xml file (in the files view) and selecting Run Target and choosing the required target from the cascading menu...from experience this is not as convenient as it sounds. You could also run the build.xml file from the command line, specifying the targets you want...
  2. Make another ant script which packaged your application separately. This is similar to the first comment except that you completely divorce the build and package processes.

I work on a very large application, which was taking upwards of 15 mins to build (completely). We wrote a utility which went through all the Netbeans project properties and built it's own dependency map, which then generated an Ant build script. We then included this in our own packaging script, so we could build the application and package it within a single pass when we wanted to create a release. This reduced the build down to something like 3 minutes (don't ask why, it just did), it also meant that we could remove the immediate dependency on Netbeans from our build process.

So. The basic answer is. Netbeans is a builder, not a packager. In order to supply this support, you're going to have to write something yourself. The easiest thing to do would be to simply write some Ant script to perform this aciton. Where you do this is up to you.

Upvotes: 1

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