How can I execute a Perl script using the Ant exec task? - perl

Question

I currently have this in my Ant build script:
<exec dir="${basedir}" executable="perl">
<arg line="${basedir}/version.pl -major"/>
</exec>
However, when that runs, I get this error message:
[exec] Could not open -major
[exec] Result: 2
To me, that says that what I have is trying to run a file called -major, which doesn't exist. The file is version.pl which takes an argument of -major.
How can I alter this to run version.pl with the argument -major?
Note that I am running the ant script on a Solaris machine, however cross-platform or solutions for other OSes are welcome for posterity.

Answer 1

I made a quick little Perl script that didn't do a whole lot and ran it just fine passing command line arguments to it using Ant 1.5 on a Solaris box.
<project name="perly" basedir="." default="run">
<target name="run">
<exec executable="perl" dir="${basedir}">
<arg value="version.pl"/>
<arg value="-major"/>
</exec>
</target>
</project>
$ ant run
What I can't quite understand is how you are getting "Could not open -major". Is this a custom die message or something? Is there supposed to be a filename passed instead of major?

Answer 2

You can try this:
<exec executable="perl" dir="${basedir}">
<arg value="version.pl"/>
<arg value="-major"/>
</exec>
On windows that is

Answer 3

Try this if it works:
<exec dir="${basedir}" executable="./test.pl">
<arg line="-major"/>
</exec>
From the ant exec doc:
dir: the directory in which the command should be executed.
So i guess it does a cd to the $dir and exec the $executable (shebang set)