Is there any way to define a constant value to Java at compile time

Question

When I used to write libraries in C/C++ I got into the habit of having a method to return the compile date/time. This was always a compiled into the library so would differe

Answer 1

AFAIK there is not a way to do this with javac. This can easily be done with Ant -- I would create a first class object called BuildTimestamp.java and generate that file at compile time via an Ant target.

Here's an Ant type that will be helpful.