How to preserve file order in Ant concat? - ant

Question

How to preserve file order in Ant concat?
Simple concat with fileset & includesfile produces rather "random" order, as order is not guaranteed:
<concat destfile="C:/targetdir/concatenated.file">
<fileset dir="C:/sourcedir/">
<includesfile name="C:/targetdir/includes.file" />
</fileset>
</concat>
What I need is concatenation in specific order that the files are listed in the includes file.
So far I've found resourcelist, which should preserve order, but I can't seem to be able to produce any concatenated file with it. :/
<concat destfile="C:/targetdir/concatenated.file">
<resourcelist>
<file file="C:/targetdir/includes.file"/>
<filterchain>
<striplinecomments>
<comment value="#"/>
</striplinecomments>
<prefixlines prefix="C:/sourcedir/"/>
</filterchain>
</resourcelist>
</concat>
Plus, the resourcelist can't seem to handle rows like
LibraryX/A/Stuff/Morestuff/*
Instead the row just produces a ".../Morestuff/* does not exist." -error
Includes file has list of relative paths:
LibraryX/A/Stuff/FileA.txt
LibraryX/A/Stuff/FileB.txt
LibraryX/A/Stuff/FileC.txt
LibraryX/A/Stuff/FileY.txt

Answer 1

I was able to get a filelist working pretty easily:
<concat destfile="C:/targetdir/concatenated.file">
<filelist dir="C:/sourcedir/">
<file name="i.txt" />
<file name="n.txt" />
<file name="o.txt" />
<file name="r.txt" />
<file name="d.txt" />
<file name="e.txt" />
<file name="r.txt" />
</filelist>
</concat>
Hope that helps!

Answer 2

If you are using Ant 1.7+, you can use the sort command
<concat destfile="C:/targetdir/concatenated.file">
<sort>
<fileset dir="C:/sourcedir/">
<include name="C:/targetdir/*.file" />
</fileset>
</sort>
</concat>
You can find the documentation of sort here

Answer 3

[On Ant 1.8.2+] You can also pass the fileset via a sort, and sort on filename, like below:
<concat destfile="./${dir.publish}/${dir.js}/b.main-${build.number}.debug.js">
<sort xmlns:rcmp="antlib:org.apache.tools.ant.types.resources.comparators">
<fileset dir="./${dir.publish}/">
<include name="**/${dir.js.main}/**/*.js"/>
<exclude name="**/${dir.js.main}/**/*.min.js"/>
</fileset>
<rcmp:name />
</sort>
</concat>
Couple of things to watch out for:
Directories are sorted before files
Capitals come before lowercase
UPDATE: Another alternative if you need to manually specify order:
<!-- create a ordered list of all the build files so that CIAPI & CIAPI.widget are built first
(can't find a smarter way to do this, since ant filesets are unordered) -->
<fileset id="a" dir="."><include name="CIAPI/build.project.xml"/></fileset>
<fileset id="b" dir="."><include name="CIAPI.widget/build.project.xml"/></fileset>
<fileset id="c" dir=".">
<include name="**/build.project.xml"/>
<exclude name="CIAPI/build.project.xml" />
<exclude name="CIAPI.widget/build.project.xml" />
</fileset>
<union id="all_build_files">
<fileset refid="a"/>
<fileset refid="b"/>
<fileset refid="c"/>
</union>
Ugly, but, erm, this is ant?

Answer 4

try this, put in alphabetical order
<project name="concatPath" default="full">
<target name="full">
<fileset id="fs" dir="./files" />
<pathconvert refid="fs" property="concatList" pathsep=";" targetos="unix"/>
<echo>${concatList}</echo>
</target>
</project>
this can be used with hierarchical structure of directories, and the order will be the exposed by David.

Answer 5

Remember that XML is not order-dependent, by definition.
To concatenate files in a sorted order, consider using <replace> instead.
Create an order file that defines the order. Then, in your build file:
Copy the order file to the destination file with <copy>
Concatenate your files together into a temporary file with <concat>
Load the files into properties with <loadfile>
Insert the text from those files into the destination file with <replace>
Example order file order_file.txt:
FILE_A_HERE
CONCAT_FILES_HERE
Example ant build file build.xml:
<copy file="order_file.txt" tofile="destination.txt" overwrite="yes">
<concat destfile="tempfile.txt">
<fileset dir="includes/">
<include name="*.txt">
<exclude name="fileA.txt">
</fileset>
</concat>
<loadfile property="fileA" srcFile="includes/fileA.txt" />
<loadfile property="concatFile" srcFile="tempfile.txt" />
<replace file="destination.txt" token="FILE_A_HERE" value="fileA" />
<replace file="destination.txt" token="CONCAT_FILES_HERE" value="concatFile" />