Running an External Ant Script in a Maven Build

You need to execute an external Ant script in a Maven build.

Configure the run goal form the Maven AntRun plugin. Define any properties you wish to pass to the external Ant build, and then call the external Ant build with the ant task, specifying the antfile and target you wish to execute.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>org.sonatype.mhandbook</groupId>
  <artifactId>ant-script-ex</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>ant-script-ex</name>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>ant-magic</id>
            <phase>prepare-package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <tasks>
                <property name="compile_classpath" 
                          refid="maven.compile.classpath"/>
                <property name="outputDir"
                          value="${project.build.outputDirectory}"/>
                <property name="sourceDir"
                          value="${project.build.sourceDirectory}"/>
                <ant antfile="${basedir}/src/main/ant/create-deps.xml"
                     target="create"/>
              </tasks>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

To execute this external Ant build, run mvn package.

~/examples/ant/ant-script Tim$ mvn package
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building ant-script-ex
...
[INFO] [antrun:run {execution: ant-magic}]
[INFO] Executing tasks
create:
     [copy] Copying 1 file to ~/examples/ant/ant-script-ex/target/classes
[INFO] Executed tasks
...
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Once this simple Ant script has been completed, the contents of ${basedir}/target/classes/deps.txt should contain the following:

compile classpath: ~/examples/ant/ant-script-ex/target/classes