When debugging ant build scripts (fun wow,) sometimes you want to view the contents of a path reference, this handy hack does just the trick:
<echo message="${toString:pathref}"/>
It probably also works for other "classes" as well.
After a little more digging around (my ant is a little rusty) the proper way to do this is to convert your path reference to a property:
<property name="class.path" refid="class.path.ref"/>
Finally a little sugar to print out your classpath in a human readble form:
<!-- pretty print the class path so it is human readable -->
<macrodef name=\"print_classpath\">
<attribute name=\"path\"></attribute>
<attribute name=\"description\" default=\"=== CLASSPATH ===\"></attribute>
<sequential>
<echo>@{description}</echo>
<for list=\"@{path}\" param=\"pathitem\" delimiter=\";\">
<sequential>
<echo>pathitem == @{pathitem}${line.separator}</echo>
</sequential>
</for>
</sequential>
</macrodef>
Note you will need the for loop from ant contrib to use this macro/task
<<taskdef resource=\"net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml\" classpathref=\"ant.classpath.tools.lib\">


