Getting an error "Could not load definitions from resource net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties. It could not be found."

Question

I am getting an error Could not load definitions from resource net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties. It could not be found. when I am trying to ant build on eclipse. So I downloaded ant-contrib-0.6.jar and kept it in my /lib location of apache ant, but it still does not resolve my issue. I have also tried by specifying the /lib location in my CLASSPATH system variable. How can I get around this error?

Esau

I don't know about Eclipse, but in NetBeans it installs an Ant too. But you can set which installation of Ant to use. Did you put the lib in the correct Ant installation? – Peal

Answer 1

You can provide full path to the ant-contrib JAR explicitly using "classpath" element:

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml">
  <classpath>
    <pathelement location="${path-to-ant-contrib}/ant-contrib-1.0b3.jar"/>
  </classpath>
</taskdef>

EDIT: Link contributed by Djacomo:

• http://ant-contrib.sourceforge.net/

Justinejustinian

Put your ant-contrib-*.jar into $HOME/.ant/lib and restart Eclipse. This works also on Windows. – Justinejustinian

<not_relevant_for_eclipse_but_matches_the_question_title>This does not help, since setting the correct env var ANT_HOME is also vital. However I receive this error without eclipse, in the pure ant.</not_relevant_for_eclipse_but_matches_the_question_title> – Defeasance

Useful link: ant-contrib.sourceforge.net – Canute

Answer 2

One important thing missing from this StackOverflow page is that setting the correct ANT_HOME env var is absolutely vital and important, without this setting ant keeps telling the same error, regardless of where you copy the ant-contrib-1.0b3.jar on your file systems. This missing thing has costed me a few hours. =)

However I receive this error without eclipse, in the pure ant.

Defeasance

Yes, Eclipse configured it for you. By the way, if you download apache-ant, extract it and run bin\ant.bat or bin/ant, ANT_HOME will be set automatically. – Justinejustinian

Answer 3

I fixed that this way:

Add the JAR to the Ant runtime classpath entries.

Window>Preferences>Ant>Runtime>Classpath

Add the JAR to either Ant Home Entries or Global Entries.

Highway

Answer 4

It would appear that you haven't installed the ant contrib jar into the correct lib directory. This can be difficult to do if you have several installations of ANT.

My suggestion is to install your ANT plugins into the "$HOME/.ant/lib" directory. You could go one step further and automate the process as follows:

<project name="ant-contrib-tasks" default="all">

    <taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>

    <target name="bootstrap">
        <mkdir dir="${user.home}/.ant/lib"/>
        <get dest="${user.home}/.ant/lib/ant-contrib.jar" src="http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=ant-contrib/ant-contrib/1.0b3/ant-contrib-1.0b3.jar"/>
    </target>

    <target name="all">
        <for param="file">
            <fileset dir="." includes="*.txt"/>
            <sequential>
                <echo message="Found file @{file}"/>
            </sequential>
        </for>
    </target>

</project>

Staffer

Answer 5

Use the below mentioned code in your build xml:

<path id="ant.classpath">
<pathelement location="${ant.jarPath}/ant.jar" />
<pathelement location="${ant.jarPath}/ant-contrib-0.3.jar" />
</path>
<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties">
 <classpath refid="ant.classpath" />
</taskdef>

And in your build property file:

ant.jarPath=D:/antjars

And place ant.jar and ant-contrib-0.3.jar in directory:D:/antjars

Rectilinear

Answer 6

Check you have read permissions for the ant-contrib jar file.

In our case after copying the file with another user it did not, giving the same error message.

Auburta