Ant: adding additional JARs to classpath

I was working in a custom ATG module in which I required to extend a core ATG class. When I ran the build ant command I got compile errors because of "cannot find symbol", in other words, my dear reference class was not being recognized. It was missing! In my Eclipse project I got no errors because I had the right library included in the project's classpath.

I started looking on how to add additional JAR files to the classpath, but after digging a little bit more in the compile target referenced in the build.xml:

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1	<target name="build" depends="echo-build-message,clean,compile,jar-classes,jar-configs,copy-to-install" />

I saw how could I add additional classpath entries using the reference id "classpath.additions". In the included common.xml file we had this:

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<target name="compile">      <mkdir dir="${java.output.dir}"/>         <mkdir dir="${java.src.dir}"/>         <copy todir="${java.output.dir}">             <fileset dir="${java.src.dir}">                 <include name="**/*.properties" />                 <include name="**/*.xml" />             </fileset>         </copy>      <if>       <isreference refid="classpath.additions" />       <then>        <path id="fullClasspath">         <path refid="classpath" />         <path refid="classpath.additions" />        </path>       </then>       <else>        <path id="fullClasspath">         <path refid="classpath" />        </path>        </else>      </if>                <echo message="java.src.dir: ${java.src.dir}, java.output.dir: ${java.output.dir}" />      <javac srcdir="${java.src.dir}" destdir="${java.output.dir}" classpathref="fullClasspath" debug="on" includeAntRuntime="false" /> </target>

So I just added this in the build.xml:

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<path id="classpath.additions">   <fileset dir="${dynamo.home}/../REST/lib"><include name="**/*.jar" /></fileset>  </path>

This seems like an elegant generic way for configuring classpaths in a multi module environment like ATG.