Category: apache Ant Tasks

Apache Ant Tasks – Import ”; Previous Next Description Import task imports another build file into the project. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 File The file to import. If this is a relative file name, the file name will be resolved relative to the importing file. Note: this is unlike most other Ant file attributes, where relative files are resolved relative to basedir. 2 Optional If true, do not stop the build if the file does not exist. 3 As Specifies the prefix prepended to the target names. 4 prefixSeparator Specifies the separator to be used between the prefix and the target name. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <import file=”nested.xml” as=”nested”/> <target name=”info” depends=”nested.echo”> </target> </project> And a nested.xml with the following content − <project> <target name=”setUp”> <property name=”build.dir” value=”build”/> </target> <target name=”echo” depends=”setUp”> <echo>build.dir is set as build</echo> </target> </project> Above script will create an ear file in the current directory as myapp.ear. Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml setUp: nested.echo: [echo] build.dir is set as build info: BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Delete ”; Previous Next Description Delete task deletes a single file, a specified directory and all its files and subdirectories, or a set of files specified by one or more resource collections. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 File The file to delete, specified as either the simple filename (if the file exists in the current base directory), a relative-path filename, or a full-path filename. 2 DIR The directory to delete, including all its files and subdirectories. 3 Verbose Whether to show the name of each deleted file. 4 Quiet If the specified file or directory does not exist, do not display a diagnostic message. 5 Failonerror Controls whether an error (such as a failure to delete a file) stops the build or is merely reported to the screen. Only relevant if quiet is false. 6 Includeemptydirs Whether to delete empty directories when using filesets. 7 Deleteonexit Indicates whether to use File#deleteOnExit() if there is a failure to delete a file. This causes the JVM to attempt to delete the file when the JVM process is terminating. 8 removeNotFollowedSymlinks Whether symbolic links (not the files/directories they link to) should be removed if they haven”t been followed because followSymlinks was false or the maximum number of symbolic links was too big. 9 performGCOnFailedDelete If Ant fails to delete a file or directory it will retry the operation once. If this flag is set to true it will perform a garbage collection before retrying the delete. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <delete file=”text.txt” verbose=”true”></delete> </target> </project> Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: [delete] Deleting: F:tutorialspointanttext.txt BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Move ”; Previous Next Description Move task moves a file to a new file or directory, or collections of files to a new directory. By default, the destination file is overwritten if it already exists. When overwrite is turned off, then files are only moved if the source file is newer than the destination file, or when the destination file does not exist. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 File The file or directory to move. 2 Preservelastmodified Give the moved files the same last modified time as the original source files. 3 Tofile The file to move to. 4 Todir The directory to move to. 5 Overwrite Overwrite existing files even if the destination files are newer. 6 Force Overwrite read-only destination files. 7 Filtering Indicates whether token filtering should take place during the move. 8 Flatten Ignore directory structure of source directory, copy all files into a single directory, specified by the todir attribute. 9 IncludeEmptyDirs Copy empty directories included with the nested FileSet(s). 10 Failonerror If false, log a warning message, but do not stop the build, when the file to copy does not exist or one of the nested filesets points to a directory that doesn”t exist or an error occurs while moving. 11 Quiet If true and failonerror is false, then do not log a warning message when the file to copy does not exist or one of the nested filesets points to a directory that doesn”t exist or an error occurs while copying. 12 Verbose Log the files that are being moved. 13 Encoding The encoding to assume when filter-copying the files. 14 Outputencoding The encoding to use when writing the files. 15 Enablemultiplemappings If true the task will process to all the mappings for a given source path. If false the task will only process the first file or directory. This attribute is only relevant if there is a mapper subelement. 16 Granularity The number of milliseconds leeway to give before deciding a file is out of date. This is needed because not every file system supports tracking the last modified time to the millisecond level. This can also be useful if source and target files live on separate machines with clocks being out of sync. 17 performGCOnFailedDelete If Ant fails to delete a file or directory it will retry the operation once. If this flag is set to true it will perform a garbage collection before retrying the delete. Setting this flag to true is known to resolve some problems on Windows (where it defaults to true) but also for directory trees residing on an NFS share. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <move file=”message.txt” tofile=”message.txt.moved”/> </target> </project> Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: [move] Moving 1 file to F:tutorialspointant BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Environment Setup ”; Previous Next Apache Ant is distributed under the Apache Software License which is a fully-fledged open source license certified by the open source initiative. The latest Apache Ant version, including its full-source code, class files, and documentation can be found at https://ant.apache.org. Installing Apache Ant It is assumed that you have already downloaded and installed Java Development Kit (JDK) on your computer. If not, please follow the instructions available at file:///C:/java/java_environment_setup.htm Ensure that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the folder, where your JDK is installed. Download the binaries from https://ant.apache.org Unzip the zip file to a convenient location c:folder by using Winzip, winRAR, 7-zip or similar tools. Create a new environment variable called ANT_HOME that points to the Ant installation folder. In this case, it is c:apache-ant-1.10.12-bin folder. Append the path to the Apache Ant batch file to the PATH environment variable. In our case, this would be the c:apache-ant-1.10.12-binbin folder. Verifying the Installation To verify the successful installation of Apache Ant on your computer, type ant on your command prompt. You should see an output as given below − C:>ant -version Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.12 compiled on October 13 2021 If you do not see the above output, then please verify that you have followed the installation steps properly. Installing Eclipse This tutorial also covers integration of Ant with Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE). Hence, if you have not installed Eclipse, please download and install Eclipse. Steps to install Eclipse Download the latest Eclipse binaries from www.eclipse.org Unzip the Eclipse binaries to a convenient location, say c:folder. Run Eclipse from c:eclipseeclipse.exe. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Sleep ”; Previous Next Description Sleep task is for sleeping a short period of time, useful when a build or deployment process requires an interval between tasks. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 Hours Hours to add to the sleep time. 2 Minutes Minutes to add to the sleep time. 3 Seconds Seconds to add to the sleep time. 4 Milliseconds Milliseconds to add to the sleep time. 5 Failonerror Flag controlling whether to break the build on an error. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <sleep seconds=”2″/> </target> </project> Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 2 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – EAR ”; Previous Next Description Ear task is an extension of the Jar task with special treatment for files that should end up in an Enterprise Application archive. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 Destfile the EAR file to create. 2 app.xml The deployment descriptor to use (META-INF/application.xml). 3 Basedir the directory from which to jar the files. 4 Compress Not only store data but also compress them. Unless you set the keep compression attribute to false, this will apply to the entire archive, not only the files you”ve added while updating. 5 Keepcompression For entries coming from existing archives (like nested zipfilesets or while updating the archive), keep the compression as it has been originally instead of using the compress attribute. 6 Encoding The character encoding to use for filenames inside the archive. 7 Filesonly Store only file entries. 8 Include comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be included. 9 Includesfile name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an include pattern. 10 Excludes comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded. 11 Excludesfile Name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern. 12 Defaultexcludes Indicates whether default excludes should be used or not (yes|no). 13 Menifest The manifest file to use. 14 Filesetmanifest Behavior when a manifest file is found in a zipfileset or zipgroupfileset file. Valid values are skip, merge, and mergewithoutmain. merge will merge all of the manifests together, and merge this into any other specified manifests. mergewithoutmain merges everything but the Main section of the manifests. 15 Whenmanifestonly Behavior when no files match. Valid values are fail, skip, and create. 16 Manifestencoding The encoding used to read the JAR manifest, when a manifest file is specified. 17 Index whether to create an index list to speed up classloading. Unless you specify additional jars with nested indexjars elements, only the contents of this jar will be included in the index. 18 IndexMetaInf Whether to include META-INF and its children in the index. Doesn”t have any effect if index is false. Oracle”s jar implementation used to skip the META-INF directory and Ant followed that example. The behavior has been changed with Java 5. In order to avoid problems with Ant generated jars on Java 1.4 or earlier, Ant will not include META-INF unless explicitly asked to. 19 Manifestencoding The encoding used to read the JAR manifest, when a manifest file is specified. 20 Update indicates whether to update or overwrite the destination file if it already exists. 21 Duplicate Behavior when a duplicate file is found. Valid values are add, preserve, and fail. 22 Roundup Whether the file modification times will be rounded up to the next even number of seconds. 23 Level Non-default level at which file compression should be performed. Valid values range from 0 (no compression/fastest) to 9 (maximum compression/slowest). 24 Preserve0permissions When updating an archive or adding entries from a different archive Ant will assume that a Unix permissions value of 0 (nobody is allowed to do anything to the file/directory) means that the permissions haven”t been stored at all rather than real permissions and will instead apply its own default values. 25 UseLanguageEncodingFlag Whether to set the language encoding flag if the encoding is UTF-8. This setting doesn”t have any effect if the encoding is not UTF-8. 26 CreateUnicodeExtraFields Whether to create Unicode extra fields to store the file names a second time inside the entry”s metadata. 27 FallbacktoUTF8 Whether to use UTF-8 and the language encoding flag instead of the specified encoding if a file name cannot be encoded using the specified encoding. 28 MergeClassPathAttributes Whether to merge the Class-Path attributes found in different manifests (if merging manifests). If false, only the attribute of the last merged manifest will be preserved. 29 FlattenAttributes Whether to merge attributes occurring more than once in a section (this can only happen for the Class-Path attribute) into a single attribute. 30 Zip64Mode When to use Zip64 extensions for entries. The possible values are never, always and as-needed. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <property name=”src.dir” value=”src” /> <property name=”build.dir” value=”build” /> <target name=”info”> <ear destfile=”${build.dir}/myapp.ear” appxml=”${src.dir}/metadata/application.xml”> <fileset dir=”${build.dir}” includes=”*.jar,*.war”/> </ear> </target> </project> Above script will create an ear file in the current directory as myapp.ear. Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: [ear] Building ear: F:tutorialspointantbuildmyapp.ear BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 1 second Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Fail ”; Previous Next Description Fail task is used to exit the current build by throwing a BuildException, optionally printing additional information. The message of the Exception can be set via the message attribute or character data nested into the element. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 Message A message giving further information on why the build exited. 2 If Only fail if a property of the given name exists in the current project 3 Unless Only fail if a property of the given name doesn”t exist in the current project 4 Status Exit using the specified status code; assuming the generated Exception is not caught, the JVM will exit with this status. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <property name=”build.dir” value=”build” /> <target name=”info”> <fail unless=”src.dir”/> </target> </project> Above script will fail the build as src.dir is not set. Output Running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: BUILD FAILED F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml:5: unless=src.dir Total time: 0 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Chmod ”; Previous Next Description Chmod task works on Unix and works similar to chmod command. It changes the permissions of a file or all files inside specified directories. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 File The file or single directory of which the permissions must be changed. (Mandatory) 2 Dir The directory which holds the files whose permissions must be changed. (Mandatory) 3 Perm The new permissions. (Mandatory) 4 Includes comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be included. (Optional) 5 Excludes comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded. (Optional) 6 Defaultexcludes indicates whether default excludes should be used or not (yes|no). (Optional). Default is yes. 7 Parallel process all specified files using a single chmod command. (Optional). Default is true. 8 Type One of file, dir or both. If set to file, only the permissions of plain files are going to be changed. If set to dir, only the directories are considered. (Optional). Default is file. 9 Maxparallel Limit the amount of parallelism by passing at most this many sourcefiles at once. Set it to negative integer for unlimited. (Optional). Default is infinite. 10 Verbose Whether to print a summary after execution or not. (Optional). Default is false. 11 OS list of Operating Systems on which the command may be executed. (Optional) 12 Osfamily OS family as used. (Optional).Default is Unix. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <chmod file=”start.sh” perm=”ugo+rx”/> </target> </project> Above script makes start.sh as readable and executable on a Unix machine. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – GZip ”; Previous Next Description Gzip task creates archive based on GZip, BZip2 or XZ algorithm. Output file is generated only if it is not present or source is newer. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 src The file/collection to gzip/bzip/xz. (Mandatory) 2 Destfile the destination file to create. (Mandatory) Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content: <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <gzip src=”test.txt” destfile=”text.gz” /> <echo>File archived.</echo> </target> </project> Output Create a text.txt file with some content in the same folder. Now running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: [gzip] Building: F:tutorialspointanttext.gz [echo] File archived. BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds You can verify that the text.gz file created. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Apache Ant Tasks – Concat ”; Previous Next Description Concat task concatenate one or more resources to a single file or to console. The destination file is created if it does not exist unless the resource list is empty and ignoreempty flag is true. Properties Sr.No Attributes & Description 1 Destfile The destination file for the concatenated stream. If not specified the console will be used instead. 2 Append Specifies whether or not the file specified by destfile should be appended. 3 Overwrite Specifies whether or not the file specified by destfile should be written to even if it is newer than all source files. 4 ForceReadonly Overwrite read-only destination files. 5 Encoding Specifies the encoding for the input files. 6 Outputencoding The encoding to use when writing the output file. 7 Fixlastline Specifies whether or not to check if each file concatenated is terminated by a new line. If this attribute is yes a new line will be appended to the stream if the file did not end in a new line. 8 EOL Specifies what the end of line character are for use by the fixlastline attribute. 9 Binary If this attribute is set to true, the task concatenates the files in a byte by byte fashion. If this attribute is false, concat will not normally work for binary files due to character encoding issues. If this option is set to true, the destfile attribute must be set, and the task cannot used nested text. Also the attributes encoding, outputencoding, filelastline cannot be used. 10 Filterbeforeconcat If this attribute is set to true, the task applies the filterchain to each input after applying fixlastline. If this attribute is false, concat will apply the filterchain only once to the already concatenated inputs. Filtering of header and footer is not affected by this setting. 11 Ignoreempty Specifies whether or not the file specified by destfile should be created if the source resource list is empty. 12 Resourcename Specifies the name reported if this task is exposed as a resource. Example Usage Create build.xml with the following content − <?xml version=”1.0″?> <project name=”TutorialPoint” default=”info”> <target name=”info”> <concat> <fileset dir=”messages” includes=”*test*”/> </concat> </target> </project> Above script will read messages folder and concatenates contents of file having test in their name and show them on console. Output Let”s create a test.txt with content as “Welcome to tutorialspoint.com” in messages folder. Now running Ant on the above build file produces the following output − F:tutorialspointant>ant Buildfile: F:tutorialspointantbuild.xml info: [concat] Welcome to tutorialspoint.com BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;