I see in build files of different project in Linux frequently use of out.absolute.dir and I'm really curious about what does it exactly mean. I write a short build file which I mentioned in following lines <project name=Test_Ant_APK default=print> <property name=cal.out.dir location=${out.absolute.dir}/>  <target name=print>   <echo>p=${cal.out.dir}</echo> </target></project>And when I run this build file from command line I got this outputBuildfile: /home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK/build.xmlprint:    [echo] p=/home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK/${out.absolute.dir}BUILD SUCCESSFULTotal time: 0 secondsI little confused about output. I think we should have p=/home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK as output. Why do we have ${out.absolute.dir} at the end of output? what does it mean? Does this build file have problem? Where does out.absolute.dir point exactly?
What does out.absolute.dir mean in ant?
ant
(this started as a comment but became too long so is now an answer)out.absolute.dir has no specific meaning in Linux.  It looks like it's a variable used by your Ant build scripts.  If it occurs frequently in many unrelated Ant scripts, it's probably just a common convention used by many Ant users/developers (but still completely arbitrary with no special meaning in itself outside of Ant).${out.absolute.dir} is just a way of ensuring that the variable is used unambiguously by the shell if other text immediately follows it - e.g. ${out.absolute.dir}foo is treated as the variable $out.absolute.dir followed by the literal text foo, whereas $out.absolute.dirfoo is treated as an entirely different variable called $out.absolute.dirfoo (which probably doesn't exist and will cause an error in the script or, worse, cause the script to do something it shouldn't, like writing to /home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK/ rather than to a subdirectory of .../Test_Ant_APK)/home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK/${out.absolute.dir} just appends the value of the variable $out.absolute.dir to /home/jody/workspace/Test_Ant_APK/.To find out exactly where that variable points, you'll need to examine the Ant build scripts thoroughly to find the line(s) that assign a value to it.  Without a copy of the scripts, we can't answer that.  I'd suggest running grep 'out.absolute.dir.*=' on your ant and associated build scripts.  $out.absolute.dir may be (and probably is) built up from other variables, so you'll have to look up their values too.It is possible that the variable is automatically defined by Ant itself.  I don't know Ant anywhere near well enough to say for sure.