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<title>Local Task</title>
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<body>

<h2>Local</h2>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>Adds a local property to the current scope. Property scopes exist at Apache Ant's
various "block" levels. These include targets as well as the
<a href="parallel.html">Parallel</a> and <a href="sequential.html">Sequential</a>
task containers (including <a href="macrodef.html">Macrodef</a> bodies). A local
property at a given scope "shadows" properties of the same name at higher scopes,
including the global scope. Note that using the Local task at the global
level effectively makes the property local to the "anonymous target" in which
top-level operations are carried out; it will not be defined for other targets
in the buildfile. <b>Since Ant 1.8</b></p>

<p>A property is made local if the <code>&lt;local&gt;</code> task
  preceedes its definition.  See the examples section.</p>

<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> 
  <tr>
    <td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
    <td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
    <td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">name</td>
    <td valign="top">The property to declare in the current scope</td>
    <td valign="top" align="center">Yes</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<h3>Examples</h3>

<h4>Temporarily shadow a global property's value</h4>

<pre>
    &lt;property name="foo" value="foo"/&gt;

    &lt;target name="step1"&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;Before local: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
        &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
        &lt;property name="foo" value="bar"/&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;After local: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/target&gt;

    &lt;target name="step2" depends="step1"&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;In step2: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/target&gt;
</pre>

<p>outputs</p>

<pre>
step1:
     [echo] Before local: foo is foo
     [echo] After local: foo is bar

step2:
     [echo] In step2: foo is foo
</pre>

<p>here the local-task shadowed the global definition
  of <code>foo</code> for the remainder of the target step1.</p>

<h4>Creating thread local properties</h4>

<pre>
    &lt;property name="foo" value="foo"/&gt;

    &lt;parallel&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;global 1: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
            &lt;property name="foo" value="bar.1"/&gt;
            &lt;echo&gt;First sequential: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;sleep seconds="1"/&gt;
            &lt;echo&gt;global 2: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
            &lt;property name="foo" value="bar.2"/&gt;
            &lt;echo&gt;Second sequential: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;global 3: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/parallel&gt;
</pre>

<p>outputs something similar to</p>

<pre>
     [echo] global 3: foo is foo
     [echo] global 1: foo is foo
     [echo] First sequential: foo is bar.1
     [echo] Second sequential: foo is bar.2
     [echo] global 2: foo is foo
</pre>

<h4>Use inside macrodef</h4>

<p>This probably is where local can be applied in the most useful
  way.  If you needed a "temporary property" inside a macrodef in Ant
  prior to Ant 1.8.0 you had to try to come up with a property name
  that would be unique across macro invocations.</p>

<p>Say you wanted to write a macro that created the parent directory
  of a given file.  A naive approach would be:</p>

<pre>
    &lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
        &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;dirname property="parent" file="@{file}"/&gt;
            &lt;mkdir dir="${parent}"/&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;/macrodef&gt;
    &lt;makeparentdir file="some-dir/some-file"/&gt;
</pre>

<p>but this would create a global property "parent" on the first
  invocation - and since properties are not mutable, any subsequent
  invocation will see the same value and try to create the same
  directory as the first invocation.</p>

<p>The recommendation prior to Ant 1.8.0 was to use a property name
  based on one of the macro's attributes, like</p>

<pre>
    &lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
        &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;dirname property="parent.@{file}" file="@{file}"/&gt;
            &lt;mkdir dir="${parent.@{file}}"/&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;/macrodef&gt;
</pre>

<p>Now invocations for different files will set different properties
  and the directories will get created.  Unfortunately this "pollutes"
  the global properties space.  In addition it may be hard to come up
  with unique names in some cases.</p>

<p>Enter <code>&lt;local&gt;</code>:</p>

<pre>
    &lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
        &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
        &lt;sequential&gt;
            &lt;local name="parent"/&gt;
            &lt;dirname property="parent" file="@{file}"/&gt;
            &lt;mkdir dir="${parent}"/&gt;
        &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;/macrodef&gt;
</pre>

<p>Each invocation gets its own property name "parent" and there will
  be no global property of that name at all.</p>

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