Convert long name to short name in NANT? - nant

Question

I am working on a NANT build project to build a VS project. One of the build file has a property definition like this:
<property name="App.dir"
value ="${directory::get-current-directory()}\Source\App"/>
This property value has been used in many other places. For example:
<exec program=".\test.exe" workingdir=".">
<arg line="${App.dir}\project1\resources\res1.resx /arg2"/>
Here I need to use <arg line=...> instead of <arg value=...> is to pass specified 2 arguments to text.exe.
when I build this NANT project on another developer's machine, I got a build failure. Finally I found out that the ${App.dir} on that developer's machine is a path in long-form and there is a space in the path. As a result, the arguments to text.exe were actually 3 or more.
I am not sure if there is any way to convert the ${App.dir} path to short name with no spaces:
<property name="App.dir" value ="????"/>
where ???? is something to convert "${directory::get-current-directory()}\Source\App" to a path name in a short-form. Is there any way to do that?
I am using NANT in Windows XP. In Unix/Cgywin, there is one function to get dos name:
cygpath::get-dos-path
Can I use this one in my NANT build file?

Answer 1

Use <arg value="">, from the NANT docs:
value - A single command-line argument; can contain space characters.

Answer 2

I think that I found two ways to resolve the issue. Instead of converting path to DOS path (8.3 name), I can use quotes around my arguments. The second method is the one as ovado recommened to use <arg value=.../> for a single argument value. Here is my test example. All the test files are in my C:\Test folder. First, I created a test bat:
#REM This is the content of Test.bat file.
#echo COMMAND PARAMETERS: %*
#echo FIRST PARAMETER: %1
#echo SECOND PARAMETER: %2
dir %1
Then I created a test build file (Test.Build)"
<project>
<target name="Test" description="Test with one line" failonerror="true">
<property name="App.dir" value ="C:\Program Files"/>
<exec program="test.bat" workingdir=".">
<arg line='"${App.dir}\Microsoft*.*" ${App.dir}\test2 /test3' />
</exec>
</target>
<target name="Test2" description="Test2 with values" failonerror="true">
<property name="App.dir" value ="C:\Program Files"/>
<exec program="test.bat" workingdir=".">
<arg value="${App.dir}\Microsoft*.*" />
<arg value="${App.dir}\test2" />
<arg value="/test3" />
</exec>
</target>
</project>
Here I used " to close my first argument in <arg ='"..."' .../>. Notice that I used single quote for my attribute line.
In this way, I run my build by NANT.EXE. I got the result as I expected:
C:\Test>NANT.exe -buildfile:test.build Test
Test:
[exec] COMMAND PARAMETERS: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*" C:\Program Files\test2 /test3
[exec] FIRST PARAMETER: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*"
[exec] SECOND PARAMETER: C:\Program
[exec] C:\Test\>dir "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*"
[exec] Volume in drive C has...
....
I got the same result with the alternative Test2,
C:\Test>NANT.exe -buildfile:test.build Test2
...