Apache Ant Build output to file using only log4j

Question

I am developing a java project using Eclipse as IDE and ant as the build tool. For logging I am making use of log4j library. I am able to get the log messages in a log file for my whole application using log4j configuration. But when I build project using ANT, the ANT build messages are still posted to console.I want to make sure that when I build the project, the build messages that ANT generates, like build failure/success, should also be posted to that sames logger file using log4j.

Please help me in this if anyone has got an idea in detail. Thanks

Answer 1

You can make use of Log4jListener available in ant.

Your log4j.properties file would look something like this

log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, LogFile
log4j.logger.org.apache.tools.ant.Project=INFO
log4j.logger.org.apache.tools.ant.Target=INFO
log4j.logger.org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs=INFO
log4j.logger.org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Echo=WARN

log4j.appender.LogFile=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
log4j.appender.LogFile.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.LogFile.layout.ConversionPattern=[%6r] %8c{1} : %m%n
log4j.appender.LogFile.file=build.log

And you when you run the ant build you have to pass the listener argument as follows -

ant -listener org.apache.tools.ant.listener.Log4jListener

For the above command to work your log4j.porperites and the log4j jar sould be on the ant classpath. This way your build logs will go to both console and the file build.log