I want my Ant build to take all Java sources from src/main/*, compile them, and place them inside bin/main/. I also want it to compile src/test/* sources to bin/test/. I wan this behavior because I want to package the binaries into different JARs, and if they all just go to a single bin/ directory it will be impossible* (extremely difficult!) to know which class files belong where.
When I go to configure my build path and then click the Source tab I see an area toward the bottom where it reads Default output folder: and then allows you to browser for its location.
I'm wondering how to create bin/main and bin/test in an existing project without "breaking" Eclipse (it happens). I'm also wondering that if I just have my Ant build make and delete those directories during the clean-n-build process, that Eclipse might not care what the default output is set to. But I can't find any documentation either way.
Thanks in advance for any help here.
In Eclipse, you can only have one output folder per project for your compiled Java files. So you cannot get Eclipse to do the split you want (i.e. compile src/main to bin/main and src/test to bin/test).
You can, if you want, create two Eclipse projects, one main project and one test project, where the test project depends on (and tests) the main project. However, in that case, each project should be in its own directory structure, which is not what you are asking for. But this is a common approach.
Another way, which I would recommend, would be to not mix Ant compilation and Eclipse's compilation. Make the Ant script the way you describe (i. e. compile the main and test directories separately and create two separate jar files). Change the Eclipse compile directory to something different, for instance bin/eclipse. Use the Ant script when making official builds or building for release. Use Eclipse's building only for development/debugging. This way, your two build systems will not get in each other's way and confuse each other.
Hope this answers your question and I understood it correctly. Good luck!