There is a good example in the "Drools JBoss Rules 5.0 Developer's Guide" chapter 11. I just got this working for my own build, here is my xml, which is part of a larger build script but at least will give you a sample: <property name="droolsPath" value="../../../shared" /> <path id="drools.classpath" > <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/drools-ant-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/knowledge-api-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/drools-core-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/drools-compiler-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/drools-decisiontables-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/drools-templates-5.2.0.Final.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/antlr-2.7.7.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/antlr-3.3.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/antlr-runtime-3.3.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/ecj-3.5.1.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/jxl-2.6.10.jar" /> <pathelement location="${droolsPath}/mvel2-2.1.0.drools2.jar" /> </path> <taskdef name="compiler" classname="org.drools.contrib.DroolsCompilerAntTask" classpathref="drools.classpath"/> <path id="model.classpath" > <pathelement location="./build/web/WEB-INF/lib/abc-domain.jar" /> <pathelement location="./build/web/WEB-INF/lib/abc-service-api.jar" /> <pathelement location="./build/web/WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar" /> </path> <target name="-pre-dist"> <echo>Compiling rules spreadsheets to binary package file</echo> <compiler srcdir="./web/packages/venue" tofile="./web/packages/venue/venue.pkg" binformat="package" classpathref="model.classpath" > <include name="*.xls" /> </compiler> </target> -- View this message in context: http://drools.46999.n3.nabble.com/Ant-Task-to-pre-compile-xls-spreadsheet... Sent from the Drools: User forum mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

the path element where you see those jars is defining the path(s) to the jar(s) containing my company's domain object model, so you won't find those abc jars anywhere! you should change those entries to point to whatever jar file(s) contain your own domain model (the classes that are used in your rules). note that the id that I used for the example ("model.classpath") is used in the compiler element (classpathref="model.classpath"). This tells the compiler where to find the domain model when it compiles the rules. -- View this message in context: http://drools.46999.n3.nabble.com/Ant-Task-to-pre-compile-xls-spreadsheet... Sent from the Drools: User forum mailing list archive at Nabble.com.