bradmcevoy.com: Ant, Netbeans and Eclipse. All sharing one classpath

Once you've got your build script working and your classpath in an ant property, you can get the two main IDE's to use them:

Make an ant target to generate your eclipse .classpath file

Note that this uses the ant-contrib module for the for-each task. You must get this jar and add it to ant's classpath

    <target name="-init-eclipse-tasks">
        <echo>initing ant-contrib tasks for eclipse generation</echo>
        <taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties"/>
    </target>

    <target name="-generate-project" description="Generate the .project file">
        <echo>generating eclipse project file</echo>
        <concat destfile=".project" append='no'><![CDATA[
<projectDescription>
    <name>${project.name}</name>
    <comment></comment>
    <projects>
    </projects>
    <buildSpec>
        <buildCommand>
            <name>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder</name>
            <arguments>
            </arguments>
        </buildCommand>
        <buildCommand>
            <name>com.ibm.sse.model.structuredbuilder</name>
            <arguments>
            </arguments>
        </buildCommand>
    </buildSpec>
    <natures>
        <nature>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature</nature>
    </natures>
</projectDescription>
        ]]></concat>
    </target>

    <target name="-generate-classpath">
        <echo>generating eclipse classpath file</echo>
        <concat destfile=".classpath" append='no'><![CDATA[
<classpath>
    <classpathentry kind="src" path="JavaSource"/>
    <classpathentry kind="src" path="UnitTestSource"/>
        ]]></concat>
        <foreach list="${cp.test.compile}" delimiter=";" param="lib" target="-generate-lib" />
        <concat destfile=".classpath" append='yes'><![CDATA[
    <classpathentry kind="output" path="bin"/>
</classpath>
        ]]></concat>
    </target>

    <target name="-generate-lib">
        <var name="lib.relative" value="" unset="true" />
        <propertyregex property="lib.relative"
              input="${lib}"
              regexp="([^\.]*)EndorsementsHandler\\(.*)"
              select="\2"
              casesensitive="false" />

        <concat destfile=".classpath" append='yes'><![CDATA[
    <classpathentry kind="lib" path="${lib.relative}"/>]]></concat>
    </target>

Configure a netbeans project to use your external classpath

Make a free form project then edit your nbproject/project.xml file. Import the properties file(s) and put ant property values into the classpath elements.

...

            <name>MyProject</name>
            <properties>
                <property-file>cp.compile.properties</property-file>
                <property-file>cp.test.compile.properties</property-file>
            </properties>
...

        <java-data xmlns="http://www.netbeans.org/ns/freeform-project-java/2">
            <compilation-unit>
                <package-root>JavaSource</package-root>
                <classpath mode="compile">${cp.compile}</classpath>
                <built-to>bin</built-to>
                <javadoc-built-to>docs/api</javadoc-built-to>
                <source-level>1.4</source-level>
            </compilation-unit>
            <compilation-unit>
                <package-root>UnitTestSource</package-root>
                <unit-tests/>
                <classpath mode="compile">${cp.test.compile}:JavaSource</classpath>
                <built-to>bin</built-to>
                <source-level>1.4</source-level>
            </compilation-unit>
        </java-data>

Note that this method relies on having your classpath in a property file, which is not always the case. If your classpath ends up in a reference you can get it into a property file like this: