ant script not expanding property value in exec arguments - ant

Question

i have an ant script as shown below:
<project name="nightly_build" default="main" basedir="checkout">
<target name="init">
<exec executable="C:/Work/Searchversion.exe"/>
<property file="initial.properties"/>
<property file="C:/Work/lastestbuild.properties"/>
<tstamp>
<format property="suffix" pattern="yyyyMMddHHmmss"/>
</tstamp>
</target>
<target name="main" depends="init">
<exec executable="C:/Program Files/True Blue Software/SnapshotCM/wco.exe">
<arg line='-h sinsscm01.sin.ds.net -S"/mobile/6.70_Extensions/6.70.102/ANT_SASE_RELEASE_${Version_Number}" /'/>
</exec>
</target>
</project>
i created the above script to replicate a command: wco -h sinsscm01.sin.ds.net -S"/mobile/6.70_Extensions/6.70.102/ANT_SASE_RELEASE_6.70.102.014" /
and 6.70.102.014 is found inside latestbuild.properties file in the form of:
Version_Number = 6.70.102.014
and this latestbuild.properties file is obtained when i execute C:/Work/Searchversion.exe
but when i execute this ant script using cruisecontrol, in my log file,
[Thread-24] INFO ScriptRunner - [exec] Cannot open snapshot 'sinsscm01.sin.ds.jdsu.net:/mobile/6.70_Extensions/6.70.102/ANT_SASE_RELEASE_${Version_Number}': No such snapshot
where ${Version_Number} should have been 6.70.102.014
How do i tackle this issue?
EDIT 1:
after trial and error and substituting with a built in property ${ant.version}, i realise that my property file could be loaded in correctly over here. can anyone point out my mistake? i dont see anything wrong though
EDIT 2:
Just additional infomation... This is actually a delegate ant script for cruisecontrol(used to perform nightly build). Here is my config.xml file for per minute build:
<cruisecontrol>
<project name="dms" buildafterfailed="true">
<listeners>
<currentbuildstatuslistener file = "logs/dms/status.txt"/>
</listeners>
<bootstrappers>
</bootstrappers>
<modificationset quietperiod="60">
<alwaysbuild/>
</modificationset>
<schedule interval="60">
<ant buildfile="nightly_build.xml" target="main"/>
</schedule>
<log dir="logs/dms">
<merge dir="checkout/dms/build/test-results" />
</log>
<publishers>
</publishers>
</project>
</cruisecontrol>
should properties file be loaded in config.xml?

Answer 1

Try breaking your arguments to wco.exe into separate child elements like this:
<exec executable="C:/Program Files/True Blue Software/SnapshotCM/wco.exe">
<arg value="-h" />
<arg value="sinsscm01.sin.ds.net" />
<arg value="-S" />
<arg value="/mobile/6.70_Extensions/6.70.102/ANT_SASE_RELEASE_${Version_Number}" />
<arg value="/" />
</exec>
I think ant isn't expanding ${Version_Number} because it is inside ' "..." ' in the version you posted.
As mentioned in the docs for <exec> you should avoid use of the <arg line=...> form.

Answer 2

You could add assertions in your init target that the required properties file exists and that the property is defined. For example:
<property name="version.file" value="C:/Work/lastestbuild.properties"/>
<available file="${version.file}" property="version.file.available"/>
<fail unless="version.file.available" message="file [${version.file}] is not available"/>
<property file="${version.file}"/>
<fail unless="version" message="property [version] is not defined"/>
<echo message="version: ${version}"/>
I think that will help you spot that the file does not exist.
I took a look at your other question about this script you're putting together. In the code which writes the version number to file, you use filename latestbuild.properties:
TextWriter latest = new StreamWriter("C:\\Work\\latestbuild.properties");
In your Ant script, you are loading a different filename lastestbuild.properties.
Unless you've fixed it since then, that will be your problem. (If you modified your external script to take the filename as a parameter, and defined the filename once as an Ant property - as in my sample above - it would help you avoid this kind of problem.)
Regarding your discovery that you need to wait for your external script before continuing in Ant, take a look at the Sleep task.