I've come across an issue with Ant's Sync task where files are being copied unnecessarily. The goal is to update everything in the ${destination} directory with the contents of the ${source} directory, even if the file in the ${destination} is newer. Based on Ant's documentation, I've added an overwrite attribute to to ensure the ${destination} is overwritten.
<target name="test">
<sync todir="${destination}" overwrite="true" granularity="5000">
<fileset dir="${source}">
</fileset>
</sync>
</target>
This task correctly overwrites the ${destination}, but the file is always copied, even when the source and destination are identical. This leads to a lot of unnecessary traffic.
Based on the documentation, I attempted to configure the granularity attribute, but this doesn't appear to have any effect. I'm also running this test between two directories on the same machine, so I wouldn't expect timestamp differences (certainly not of more than 5 seconds).
Any thoughts about why the Sync task and overwrite attribute function in this way? Are there any solutions using the default set of Ant tasks to prevent the unnecessary file copying?
If you use the sync task with overwrite="true", you will get this behavior.
You could use it with overwrite="false", and then follow up with a copy task that only copy the files that are existing but different, with the different selector, e.g.:
<copy todir="${destination}">
<fileset dir="${source}">
<different targetdir="${destination}" ignoreFileTimes="true"/>
</fileset>
</copy>
Related
I want to replace 1-2 files in a huge archive using zip task (or any other ANT task that can do this). I know passing update=true parameter can do it but it is only if new file has grater timestamp than old file. I want to make sure that the file gets replaced even though it has old timestamp as compared to the file in existing archive.
I have gone through several posts where they suggest unzip-replace-rezip thing. However I want to avoid this if possible because my archive is huge (in GBs). Is there any other way which has minimum performance impact?
Other way I found was using zipfileset task as follows:
<zip destfile="tmp.jar">
<zipfileset src="src.jar">
<exclude name="abc.class" />
</zipfileset>
<zipfileset dir="${basedir}/myclasses" includes="abc.class" />
</zip>
<move file="tmp.jar" tofile="src.jar" />
Does this task do the same as unzip-delete-add-rezip for entire archive? Or is it more efficient in terms of time?
The ant build tool provides two different tasks <fileset/> and <zipfileset/>.
According to the documentation <zipfileset/> allows us to extract files from a .zip file
if we use src attribute.
My question is if we are using dir attribute to select files then what is the difference between the two, <zipfileset/> and <fileset/>.
e.g.
<zipfileset dir="conf/Gateway>
<include name="jndi.properties" />
</zipfileset>
and
<fileset dir="conf/Gateway>
<include name="jndi.properties" />
</fileset>
One useful difference between the two tasks if you're building an archive (a ZIP or WAR or JAR for example) is that a zipfileset has a prefix attribute you can use to relocate the given files at a different folder in the archive. For example, if the following is included in a bigger set of fileset and zipfileset elements:
<zipfileset dir="conf/Gateway" prefix="properties">
<include name="jndi.properties" />
</zipfileset>
then the file conf/Gateway/jndi.properties will actually be included in the output as conf/Gateway/properties/jndi.properties. You can achieve the same end in other ways, but this is occasionally useful.
Otherwise, just use the task that seems most appropriate for the task at hand.
Is there any way to exclude files from an ant fileset based on the file content?
We do have test servers where code files are mixed up with files that have been generated by a CMS.
Usually, the files are placed in different folders, but there is a risk that real code files are in the middle of generated code.
The only way to differentiate generated files is to open the files and look at it's content. If the file contains a keyword, it should be excluded.
Does anyone know a way to perform this with Ant?
From the answer provided by Preet Sangha, Ishould use a filterchain. However, I'm missing a step here.
Let's say I load a text file of exclusions to be performed:
<loadfile property="exclusions" srcFile="exclusions.txt" />
But I don't know how to integrate it into my current copy task:
<copy todir="${test.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}">
</fileset>
</copy>
I tried to add the following exclude to the fileset but it does not do anything:
<exclude name="${exclusions}"/>
I'm sure I'm missing a simple step...
Have a look at the not and contains selectors.
The not selector contains an example of pretty much exactly what you're trying to do.
<copy todir="${test.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}">
<not>
<contains text="your-keyword-here"/>
</not>
</fileset>
</copy>
There's also the containsregexp selector which might be useful if your criteria for exclusion is more complicated.
There's a load more selectors you can use to refine your selection if needed.
I don't know ant but reading the docs....
Can you build a files list using a filterchain, and put this into the excludefiles of a fileset?
or
perhaps create a fileset with a filterchain that uses a filterreader and linecontainsregexp
Basically, I get a path like "C:\test\subfolder1\subfolder2\subfolder3\myfile.txt", but it's possible that subfolders 1-3 don't exist already, which means I'd get an exception if I try to write to the file.
Is there a way to create the directory structure the target file is in, either by using some task that creates the structure when it outputs to the file and then deleting the file, or by parsing the directory part of the path and using the mkdir task first?
Ant will create the full tree of directories for you when you use the <mkdir> task. So you just need to use the <dirname> task to get the directory name from the file name.
<dirname property="directoryProperty" file="${filePathProperty}"/>
<mkdir dir="${directoryProperty}" />
The first line extracts the directory portion of your file path and stores it in the directoryProperty property. The second line creates the directory (and any parent directories that don't exist).
This task works well
<mkdir dir="${file}/../"/>
Sometimes we could have an alternate choice, using touch task
<touch file="${file}" mkdirs="true" verbose="true"/>
This task should do the job but would have a side effect to create the file with zero size
Just make failonerror=false to avoid the error to stop the whole logic.
<delete includeemptydirs="true" failonerror="false">
<fileset dir="${builder-base.dir}" includes="**/*"/>
</delete>
Using the
<mkdir dir="${dir}"/ >
inside your <target> tag should work, but I am not sure what else you want to do along with mkdir?
I'm not 100% sure it'll work but you might be able to do something like the following to make the parent directory you're after:
<mkdir dir="${file}/../"/>
If that doesn't work straight off then it might be worth defining a property using the location syntax before creating a directory with the new property:
<property name="dir" location="${file}/../" />
<mkdir dir="${dir}" />
Well-behaved Ant tasks are generally expected to create any necessary directory structures unless there is a good reason not to.
Are you writing a task? If so you should add the directory creation logic to your task. If you are getting the task from a third party you should point this fact out to them and have them fix their task. Failing that Dan's solution should work.
I don't want ant's jar task to notify me every time it skips a file because the file has already been added. I get reams of this:
[jar] xml/dir1/dir2.dtd already added, skipping
Is there a way to turn this warning off?
This is an older question, but there is one obvious way to exclude the duplicates warning, do not include the duplicate files. You could do this in one of two ways:
Exclude the duplicate files in some fashion, or
Copy the files to a staging area, so that the cp task deals with duplicates, not the jar task.
So, instead of doing:
<jar destfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar">
<fileset dir="a" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
<fileset dir="b" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
<fileset dir="c" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
</jar>
do one of:
<jar destfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar">
<fileset dir="a" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
<fileset dir="b" include="xml/data/*.xml"/>
<fileset dir="c" include="xml/data/*.xml"/>
</jar>
or
<copy todir="tmpdir">
<fileset dir="a" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
<fileset dir="b" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
<fileset dir="c" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
</copy>
<jar destfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar">
<fileset dir="tmpdir" include="xml/data/*.{xml,dtd}"/>
</jar>
<delete dir="tmpdir"/>
Edit: Base on the comment to this answer, there is a third option, although it is a fair bit more work... You can always get the source to the jar task, and modify it so that it does not print out the warnings. You could keep this as a local modification to your tree, move it to a different package and maintain it yourself, or try to get the patch pushed back upstream.
I don't know of any options on the jar task to suppress these messages, unless you run the whole build with the -quiet switch, in which case you may not see other information you want.
In general if you have lots of duplicate files it is a good thing to be warned about them as a different one may be added to that which you expect. This possibly indicates that a previous target of the build has not done its job as well as it might, though obviously without more details it is impossible to say.
Out of interest why do you have the duplicate files?