While load-time is the preferred approach, it is also possible to instrument classes at compile-time. To do this, the aopc tool is used, with the following requirements:

The following is an example ant task which performs compile-time instrumentation:

<taskdef name="aopc" classname="org.jboss.aop.ant.AopC" classpathref="aop.classpath"/>
<target name="aopc" depends="compile" description="Precompile aop class">
    <aopc compilerclasspathref="aop.classpath" verbose="true">
       <src path="${build}"/>
       <include name="org/jboss/cache/aop/test/**/*.class"/>
       <aoppath path="${output}/resources/pojocache-aop.xml"/>
       <classpath path="${build}"/>
       <classpath refid="lib.classpath"/>
    </aopc>
</target>

In this example, once the aopc target is executed the classes in the build directory are modified. They can then be packaged in a jar and loaded using the normal Java mechanisms.