An ArgumentProcessor is a parser of command line argument which is
then call before and after the build file is being parsed. Third party
libraries may then be able to have custom argument line argument which modify
Ant behaviour.
An ArgumentProcessor is called each time Ant parse an unknown
argument, an ArgumentProcessor doesn't take precedence over Ant to
parse already supported options. It is then recommended to third
party ArgumentProcessor implementation to chose specific 'enough'
argument name, avoiding for instance one letter arguments.
It is also called at the different phases so different behaviour can be
implemented. It is called just after every arguments are parsed, just
before the project is being configured (the build file being parsed),
and just after. Some of the methods to be implemented return a boolean:
if true
is returned, Ant will terminate immediately, without
error.
Being called during all these phases, an ArgumentProcessor
can just print some specific system properties and quit
(like -diagnose), or print some specific properties of a
project after being parsed and quit (like -projectHelp),
or just set some custom properties on the project and let it run.
First, the ArgumentProcessor must be an implementation of
org.apache.tools.ant.ArgumentProcessor.
Then to declare it: create a file META-INF/services/org.apache.tools.ant.ArgumentProcessor which contains only one line the fully qualified name of the class of the implementation. This file together with the implementation class need then to be found in Ant's classpath.