Junit classpath in ant: problems with dirset - ant

Question

I'm getting troubles trying to use
<dirsets>
in my junit ant.
This is the snippet of the classpath.
<target name="myTests" >
<junit haltonerror="true" haltonfailure="true" fork="true">
<classpath>
<dirset dir="/my/absolute/root/path/where/I/keep/compiled/classes">
<include name="com/mycompany/mytests"/>
</dirset>
<pathelement location="my/path/to/jars/myjar1.jar" />
<pathelement location="my/path/to/jars/myjar2.jar" />
<!-- and so on -->
</classpath>
<test name="com.mycompany.mytests.MyFirstTest"
outfile="${dir.report.test}/report_MyFirstTest">
<formatter type="xml" />
</test>
</junit>
</target>
when I launch the test, after having successfully compiled all the code, ant complains:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mycompany.mytests.MyFirstTest
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:169)
I tried with absolute, relative paths and it never works. My classpath consists on many jars specified with many and that that is never recognized.
Where is my fault?
thanks

Answer 1

I former times when I used ant I used the nested <classpath> element and specified the classpath with the path-like structure - like this:
<path id="project.test.classpath">
<pathelement location="/my/absolute/root/path/where/I/keep/compiled/classes" />
<fileset dir="/my/path/to/jars">
<include name="**/*.jar" />
</fileset>
</path>
<target name="myTests">
<junit haltonerror="true" haltonfailure="true" fork="true">
<classpath refid="project.test.classpath" />
<test name="com.mycompany.mytests.MyFirstTest" outfile="${dir.report.test}/report_MyFirstTest">
<formatter type="xml" />
</test>
</junit>
</target>
Maybe that fit's also for you.