For task in ANT

We might require to use for task in the ANT scripts.

By default for task in not available with basic ANT installation

Using the ant-contrib jar file we can define "for" task in build script.

Copy the ant-contrib-version.jar to the ANT_HOME lib folder and in the build script add the following section

  <project name="SOA_OSB_Deployment" basedir="." default="init">
     <taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>
     <target name="init">
            <for list="1,2,3,4,5" param="letter">
<sequential>
<echo>Letter @{letter}</echo>
</sequential>
</for>
      </target>
  </project>

Note : we should use net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml  not  net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties

Also the ant-contrib-version.jar can be kept any location, but we need to explicitly tell ant script where to locate the file

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml">
  <classpath>
    <pathelement location="/usr/share/ant/lib/ant-contrib-version.jar"/>
  </classpath>
</taskdef>