How do I execute simple ant call through maven?

My project runs perfectly fine with following commands:

C:\project\<project_name>\ant -lib ant\lib -buildfile applications/<sub-project-path>/ant/build.xml deploy

However, if I wrap this command either in maven-antrun-plugin or exec-maven-plugin in pom, I get all kinds of path issues.

For maven-antrun-plugin, it seems the certain properties can not be loaded due to path issue. In exec-maven-plugin, it seems that ant target never got passed in correctly.
Can someone please advice how I can apply this in a pom file? Much appreciated.

This is my pom for exec:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>process-resources</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>exec</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                    <executable>ant</executable>
                    <workingDirectory>${basedir}</workingDirectory>
                    <arguments>
                        <argument>'-lib ant/lib'</argument>
                        <argument>'-buildfile $basedir/<project-path>/build.xml'</argument>
                        <argument>deploy</argument>
                    </arguments>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Solution

You should pass needed dependencies directly into antrun plugin declaration, right after <executions> element.

    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
        <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.1</version>
        <executions>
            ...
        </executions>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>ant-contrib</groupId>
            <artifactId>ant-contrib</artifactId>
            <version>${ant-contrib.version}</version>
            <exclusions>
              <exclusion>
                <groupId>ant</groupId>
                <artifactId>ant</artifactId>
              </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
          </dependency>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
            <artifactId>jasper</artifactId>
            <version>${tomcat.compile.version}</version>
          </dependency>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>com.sun</groupId>
            <artifactId>tools</artifactId>
            <version>${java.version}.0</version>
            <scope>system</scope>
            <systemPath>${jdk.home}/tools.jar</systemPath>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </plugin>

I've included some libraries that I use in our project, so that you have an example. Note, that if your build uses some non-standard ( i.e. something outside java.lang ) Java API classes, you have to pass tools.jar as a dependency.

Also, if you use ant-contrib do not forget to exclude ant as a dependency, because it is dependent on some ancient version of ant and you will get a version collision.

Another annoying thing is that dependency assigned directly to plugin execution are not part of POM's <dependencyManagement>, so you have to spell out precise versions. One workaround is to declare version properties in the same place as your central <dependencyManagement> and use the properties instead of hardcoded versions.