[kepler-dev] using ant to detect J3D

[Dan Higgins]

Hi Ilkay,

    You may have already figured this out, but I got interested in how 
to detect if J3D is installed using ant.

    The clue was to look at the PT config to see how it is detected 
there. There is a java file (java3DTest.java) in the PTII/config/ dir 
that is used in the PT configure. Basically, they just try to compile 
this file which import a class from J3D and if the compile works, then 
J3D is installed; otherwise it is not.

    In Ant, we can use the Available and Condition tasks. For example, 
this seems to work

  <!--target to detemine if java3D is available -->
  <target name="checkJ3D">
    <condition property="J3D.available">
      <available classname="javax.media.j3d.Canvas3D"/>
    </condition>
  </target>
  <target name="hasJ3D" depends="checkJ3D" if="J3D.available">
    <echo>Java3D is available</echo>
  </target>

Running the target 'hasJ3D' will only run <echo> if the 
'javax.media.j3d.Canvas3D' class is available (The choice of the 
Canvas3D class was arbitrary). Simple replace any J3D specific 
compilation commandswhere the <echo> is and it will only be compiled 
when appropriate.

Dan

-- 
*******************************************************************
Dan Higgins                                  higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Ph: 805-893-5127
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) 
Marine Science Building - Room 3405
Santa Barbara, CA 93195
*******************************************************************