Getting result
The result property contains the return status code from the make execution. To test this I wrote a simple Makefile and a hello.c program.

When I run the ant script, the Makefile is called and the hello.c program is built successfully.

The Makefile Build status above is equal to "0" because the build was successful. Next I will make a mistake in the C program which will cause the Makefile build to fail.

Ant References
There are many good references that explain how to use these and other Ant core tasks. I usually start at the Ant Apache home (http://ant.apache.org). I should also note that I searched for examples on the internet that covered the exec core task and the result property. I found that many of these examples did not work as explained. The reason turned out to be that the return code property did not get set correctly if it was initialized to a value as follows:

Once I removed this line the value was set correctly as shown above.

Conclusion
Many organizations do set standards for build engineering that include the requirement of running a build from an Ant file. In my assignment I had to do this because I needed to use Ant directives to indicate build success or failure. Using the Ant exec core task allowed me to run a Makefile from Ant and then manage the return code back in the Ant script. Please send me your Ant tips and tricks and we'll publish your article in CM Basics! .

Bob Aiello is the Editor-in-Chief for CM Crossroads and a Software Engineer specializing in Software Process Improvement including Software Configuration and Release Management. Mr. Aiello has over 25 years experience as a technical manager in several top NYC Financial Services firms where he had had company-wide responsibility for CM, often providing hands-on technical support for enterprise Source Code Management tools, SOX/Cobit compliance, build engineering, continuous integration and automated application deployment. Bob is the Vice Chair of the IEEE 828 Standards working group (CM Planning) and is a member of the IEEE Software and Systems Engineering Standards Committee (S2ESC) Management Board. He is a long standing member of the Steering Committee of the NYC Software Process Improvement Network (CitySPIN), where he serves as the chair of the CM SIG. Mr. Aiello holds a Masters in Industrial Psychology from NYU and a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from Hofstra University. You may contact Mr. Aiello at raiello@acm.org or link with him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobaiello

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Bob Aiello said:

	... Hi folks - I will get this fixed asap. Thanks for pointing this out! Bob
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March 03, 2011
Votes: +0

George Young said:

	... As noted, the output of "cat ..." is not rendered correctly in the box, I suspect the real xml tags are not being escaped for viewing by the html rendering agent which doesn't know what to do with and ? ... failonerror="false" failifexecutionfails="false" resultproperty="myStatus" errorproperty="/tmp/error.out" outputproperty="/tmp/foo.out" error="/tmp/error.txt" output="/tmp/output.txt">
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March 02, 2011
Votes: +0

Bob Aiello said:

	... oh my - that is awful. I wish that I could say that I did that on purpose to see if anyone was reading it :-) We will get that fixed asap and THANK YOU! Hey how about sharing YOUR example :-)
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November 05, 2009
Votes: -2

JulieAnnaB said:

... Hi Bob, thanks for posting this. I think there is some great information here, but it isn't being displayed properly. The cat of "runMakefile.xml" isn't complete: no target or exec is displayed. Also, in the section "Ant references", there is nothing displayed after "..as follows:". I had to view the source to get more info. I got the exec of make to work, now I need to get the status of the make propagated. Thanks.

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November 05, 2009
Votes: +4

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