ant warning: "'includeantruntime' was not set"

Question

I receive the following warning:

[javac] build.xml:9: warning: 'includeantruntime' was not set, 
defaulting to build.sysclasspath=last; set to false for repeatable builds

What does this mean?

Answer 1

Ant Runtime

Simply set includeantruntime="false":

<javac includeantruntime="false" ...>...</javac>

If you have to use the javac-task multiple times you might want to consider using PreSetDef to define your own javac-task that always sets includeantruntime="false".

Additional Details

From http://www.coderanch.com/t/503097/tools/warning-includeantruntime-was-not-set:

That's caused by a misfeature introduced in Ant 1.8. Just add an attribute of that name to the javac task, set it to false, and forget it ever happened.

From http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/javac.html:

Whether to include the Ant run-time libraries in the classpath; defaults to yes, unless build.sysclasspath is set. It is usually best to set this to false so the script's behavior is not sensitive to the environment in which it is run.

Answer 2

Chet Hosey wrote a nice explanation here:

Historically, Ant always included its own runtime in the classpath made available to the javac task. So any libraries included with Ant, and any libraries available to ant, are automatically in your build's classpath whether you like it or not.

It was decided that this probably wasn't what most people wanted. So now there's an option for it.

If you choose "true" (for includeantruntime), then at least you know that your build classpath will include the Ant runtime. If you choose "false" then you are accepting the fact that the build behavior will change between older versions and 1.8+.

As annoyed as you are to see this warning, you'd be even less happy if your builds broke entirely. Keeping this default behavior allows unmodified build files to work consistently between versions of Ant.

Answer 3

As @Daniel Kutik mentioned, presetdef is a good option. Especially if one is working on a project with many build.xml files which one cannot, or prefers not to, edit (e.g., those from third-parties.)

To use presetdef, add these lines in your top-level build.xml file:

  <presetdef name="javac">
    <javac includeantruntime="false" />
  </presetdef>

Now all subsequent javac tasks will essentially inherit includeantruntime="false". If your projects do actually need ant runtime libraries, you can either add them explicitly to your build files OR set includeantruntime="true". The latter will also get rid of warnings.

Subsequent javac tasks can still explicitly change this if desired, for example:

<javac destdir="out" includeantruntime="true">
  <src path="foo.java" />
  <src path="bar.java" />
</javac>

I'd recommend against using ANT_OPTS. It works, but it defeats the purpose of the warning. The warning tells one that one's build might behave differently on another system. Using ANT_OPTS makes this even more likely because now every system needs to use ANT_OPTS in the same way. Also, ANT_OPTS will apply globally, suppressing warnings willy-nilly in all your projects

Answer 4

The answer from Daniel works just perfect. Here is a sample snippet that I added to my build.xml:

<target name="compile">
    <mkdir dir="${classes.dir}"/>
    <javac srcdir="${src.dir}" destdir="${classes.dir}" includeantruntime="false">
                                                 <!--   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  -->
        <classpath>
            <path id="application" location="${jar.dir}/${ant.project.name}.jar"/>
            <path id="junit" location="${lib.dir}/junit-4.9b2.jar"/>
        </classpath>
    </javac>
</target>

Answer 5

i faced this same, i check in in program and feature. there was an update has install for jdk1.8 which is not compatible with my old setting(jdk1.6.0) for ant in eclipse. I install that update. right now, my ant project is build success.

Try it, hope this will be helpful.

Answer 6

Use <property name="build.sysclasspath" value="last"/> in your build.xml file

For more details search includeAntRuntime in Ant javac

Other possible values could be found here

Answer 7

If you like me work from commandline the quick answer is executing

export ANT_OPTS=-Dbuild.sysclasspath=ignore

And then run your ant script again.