This is a common request so AntXtras has a straightforward way to record and capture the time it takes a group of tasks to execute. First you need to record your start time using a variable (which can be set and reset for any number of iterations) with the special “now” operation. Then after the tasks-to-be-timed have completed, you can update that same variable with the duration using the special “-now” operation. The following snippet demonstrates how to do this:

<target name="timedtarget">
  <assign var="time" op="now"/>
    [...tasks to be timed...]
  <assign var="time" op="-now"/>
</target>

One problem with the snippet above, is it captures the duration as milliseconds (a long number). If you want to capture the duration as a human readable string like say “30sec.213ms” for 30 seconds 213 milliseconds, you could use the $duration: function shortcut with the captured duration like so:

<target name="timedtarget">
  <assign var="time" op="now"/>
    [...tasks to be timed...]
  <assign var="time" op="-now"/>
  <assign var="time" value="${$var:time|$duration:}"/>
</target>
 
[alternatively with help of $now: shortcut from 2.0.0]
 
<target name="timedtarget">
  <assign var="time" op="now"/>
    [...tasks to be timed...]
  <assign var="time" value="${$now:--${$var:time}|$duration:}"/>
</target>

[2.0+] An interesting presetdef wrapper task¹⁾ for targets or tasksets you’d liked timed might look like the snippet below which extends the examples above with the $fixture: shortcut to automatically stamp the time it takes to run an entire target.

<presetdef name="timed">
  <protect>
    <assign var="_#_${$fixture:target}" op="now"/>
    <always>
      <show level="info"
        message="[T] ${$now:--${$var:_#_${$fixture:target}}|$duration:}"/>
    </always>
  </protect>
</presetdef>
 
[to be used like...]
 
<target name="timedtarget">
  <timed>
    [work work work...]
  </timed>
</target>

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