Ant input called multiple times if used with ant-contrib foreach task

Question

I have this code snippet inside build.xml file.

<input message="Please enter environment:" addproperty="environment" defaultvalue="dev"/>

<target name="DeployComposites">
  <echo>Deploying projects ${composite.list}</echo>
  <foreach list="${composite.list}" param="compositeName" target="compile-and-deploy" inheritall="false"/>
</target>

The input prompts multiple times for the property value.Is there a way to make it ask only once

Answer 1

The way foreach works it creates a new Ant Project for each invocation of the desired target. Since you have the input at the top level it will be called each time a new Project is created.

Instead, put it inside another target, for example

<target name="get-env">
  <input message="Please enter environment:" addproperty="environment" defaultvalue="dev"/>
</target>

<target name="DeployComposites" depends="get-env">
  <echo>Deploying projects ${composite.list}</echo>
  <foreach list="${composite.list}" param="compositeName" target="compile-and-deploy" inheritall="false"/>
</target>