ANT - Converting a String to Path with location attribute

Question

I have the following ANT script that gives me a list of websphere libraries at runtime based on the websphere root directory. I need to convert the resulting string into separate path location elements

My current script is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="TestPath" basedir="." default="print-dirset">

    <target name="init" description="Define websphere libraries">
        <property name="compile.lib.dir" value="C:\Software\WAS85" />
    </target>
    <target name="print-dirset" depends="init" description="">
        <path id="websphere.libs">
            <dirset dir="${compile.lib.dir}">
                <include name="*" />
            </dirset>
        </path>
        <property name="websphere.libs.list" refid="websphere.libs" />
        <echo message="websphere.libs.list: ${websphere.libs.list}" />
        <pathconvert property="websphere.libs.convert" pathsep="${file.separator}*${path.separator}">
            <path path="${websphere.libs.list}" />
        </pathconvert>
        <echo message="websphere.libs.convert: ${websphere.libs.convert}" />
    </target>
</project>

which outputs a string like below

 [echo] websphere.libs.list: C:\Software\WAS85\Scheduler;C:\Software\WAS85\UDDIReg;C:\Software\WAS85\bin;C:\Software\WAS85\configuration;....C:\Software\WAS85\web;C:\Software\WAS85\wlp
 [echo] websphere.libs.convert: C:\Software\WAS85\Scheduler\*;C:\Software\WAS85\UDDIReg\*;C:\Software\WAS85\bin\*;C:\Software\WAS85\configuration\*;...C:\Software\WAS85\web\*;C:\Software\WAS85\wlp

I would like to translate the second string above into a structure like below

<path id="websphere.classpath">
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\Scheduler\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\UDDIReg\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\bin\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\configuration\*" />
......
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\web\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\wlp\*" />
</path>

The last element in the conversion also needs to add the '\*' part which is not in the original string.

which can then be used with a structure like

<path id="compile.classpath">
  <path refid="ext.classpath"/>
  <path refid="websphere.classpath"/>
  <path refid="module.compile.classpath"/>
</path>

The purpose of the above attempt is to reduce the length of classpath by using wildcard classpath provided by JDK 1.6 and which is available in ANT starting ANT 1.8.2. I am using ANT 1.8.4.

I am not an expert in ANT, I can just get by, by looking at examples.

Is there a way to achieve what I am trying to do? How can I do it? Any example would be very helpful.

Answer 1

I was able to get the wildcard part to work by using the fork="yes" and executable="path-to-my-executable" attributes in the javac task.

I do not want to mark the question answered, because my basic question was about converting the string. But since the answer received didn't talk about that and also didn't mention how to get wildcard classpath working, and the purpose of my question was to get the wildcard classpath working, i have noted it here for whoever is trying to get that to work

I still need some help in converting the semi-colon separated string to construct like below

<path id="websphere.classpath">
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\Scheduler\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\UDDIReg\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\bin\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\configuration\*" />
......
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\web\*" />
    <pathelement location="C:\Software\WAS85\wlp\*" />
</path>

Update:

I wrote a custom ANT task to get the wildcard classpath working

Answer 2

If all of your dependencies reside in C:\Software\WAS85, you can use fileset to catch all of your dependencies:

<fileset dir="${compile.lib.dir}" id="compile.files">
  <include name="**/*.java"/>
  <!-- include name="**/*.jar" /-->
</fileset>

You can then use to refer to this fileset as compile.files elsewhere in your build.xml.