return exit code from ant to a batch file

Question

I have several ant tasks in my .bat file to execute.
My .bat file is like below:

call ant -buildfile task.xml target1
call ant -buildfile task.xml target2

For each ant task, it will execute a java program and the program will return an exit code by using System.exit().

I know the exit code can be received by using resultproperty in ant configuration.
How can I get the exit code in my .bat file from calling an ant task?

Answer 1

You can try something like this:

1) In your ant task.xml: make it failing if the resultproperty is not 0. To do it, you can use the fail task with

• the condition that the resultProperty is not 0
• a status code equals to the status code returned from your java program

Here is sample code:

<exec executable="cmd" resultproperty="javaReturnCode" ...>
    ...
</exec>

<fail message="java program execution failure" status="${javaReturnCode}">
   <condition>
      <not>
        <equals arg1="${javaReturnCode}" arg2="0"/>
      </not>
   </condition>
</fail>

2) In your batch file: the %errorlevel% contains the return code of the last command so something like this can work:

call ant -buildfile task.xml target1
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO javaProgramErrorHandlingTarget1
call ant -buildfile task.xml target2
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO javaProgramErrorHandlingTarget2
REM both ant targets exit normally so continue normal job
...
:javaProgramErrorHandlingTarget1
...
:javaProgramErrorHandlingTarget2
...