Excluding a directory and all subdirectories of it? - ant

Question

I have a Java application that I am packaging into a JAR. I created an Ant script to do that as I need to also add resources to the JAR (icons etc).
Now, I have libraries that I use in my project (Apache HttpClient and a JSON library). I also copy their contents into the JAR, as it is the simplest way.
My build file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<project default="create_run_jar"
name="Create Runnable Jar">
<target name="create_run_jar">
<jar destfile="C:/Users/Pietu1998/Documents/Java/Whatever.jar"
filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class"
value="net.pietu1998.whatever" />
<attribute name="Class-Path" value="." />
</manifest>
<fileset dir="C:/Users/Pietu1998/Documents/Java/Whatever/bin"
includes="*.class" />
<fileset dir="C:/Users/Pietu1998/Documents/Java/Whatever/res" />
<zipfileset excludes="META-INF/**"
src="C:/Users/Pietu1998/Documents/Java/Whatever/lib/commons-codec-1.6.jar" />
<zipfileset excludes="META-INF/**"
src="C:/Users/Pietu1998/Documents/Java/Whatever/lib/commons-logging-1.1.3.jar" />
<!-- More (like 5) JARs -->
</jar>
</target>
</project>
However, the libraries (JARs) have their own META-INF folders, and they have a lot of stuff in them; files like LICENSE, CONDITIONS and also a folder for Maven called maven.
The project is for personal use, so I just want to get rid of the unnecessary stuff. I have tried some ways to exclude all of the META-INF stuff, but something is always left behind.
excludes="META-INF" leaves everything.
excludes="META-INF/**" leaves the maven folder.
**/excludes="META-INF/**", see above.
I believe I could use a lot of include-excludes or patternsets, but it would lead to a lot of repeating.
Is there a way (not for this specific case) to exclude a folder (META-INF here) and all its contents including subdirectories, and preferably with not too much repeating (for a lot of libraries)?

Answer 1

Using excludes="META-INF/**"" works for me (Ant 1.9.3, Windows 7, JDK 1.7.0_51)
Some test after downloading original commons-logging-1.1.3.jar from here :
<project>
<zipfileset excludes="META-INF/**" src="c:/area51/commons-logging-1.1.3.jar" id="foobar"/>
<!-- for output line by line -->
<pathconvert property="foo" refid="foobar">
<map from="c:/area51/commons-logging-1.1.3.jar:" to="${line.separator}"/>
</pathconvert>
<echo>${foo}</echo>
</project>
output contains only classfiles under org/apache/commons/logging/.. :
[echo] commons-logging-1.1.3.jar
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/Log.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogConfigurationException.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$1.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$2.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$3.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$4.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$5.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory$6.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/LogSource.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/AvalonLogger.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/Jdk13LumberjackLogger.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/Jdk14Logger.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/Log4JLogger.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/LogFactoryImpl$1.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/LogFactoryImpl$2.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/LogFactoryImpl$3.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/LogFactoryImpl.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/LogKitLogger.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/NoOpLog.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/ServletContextCleaner.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/SimpleLog$1.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/SimpleLog.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/WeakHashtable$1.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/WeakHashtable$Entry.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/WeakHashtable$Referenced.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/WeakHashtable$WeakKey.class;
[echo] org/apache/commons/logging/impl/WeakHashtable.class
Maybe you forgot to set the update attribute from your jar task to true :
<jar destfile=".." update="true" ..>
to overwrite some already existing jarfile with the same name !?

Answer 2

I found a way to do it with the stars.
<zipfileset excludes="META-INF/**/*" src="C:\library.jar" />
This excludes the META-INF folder and all its contents.
* means it excludes all files inside a folder, and
foo/**/bar means it excludes bar in any level inside foo.
So, foo/**/* excludes every file on every level inside foo.