Question

At build time, I am updating some variables that are stored in the web.xml file using variables in a properties file, Is there a way to simplify what I am doing here:

    <target name="war-test" depends="compile">
            <mkdir dir="${dist}"/>
            <mkdir dir="${dist}/tmp"/>
            <copy file="WebContent/WEB-INF/web.xml.templ" tofile="${dist}/tmp/web.xml">
                    <filterchain>
                            <replacetokens>
                                    <token key="smtp.hostname" value="${test.smtp.hostname}"/>
                                    <token key="smtp.port" value="${test.smtp.port}"/>
                            </replacetokens>
                    </filterchain>
            </copy>
            <war destfile="${dist}/mywarfile-test.war" webxml="${dist}/tmp/web.xml">
                    <fileset dir="WebContent">
                            <exclude name="META-INF/**"/>
                            <exclude name="META-INF"/>
                            <exclude name="WEB-INF/**"/>
                            <exclude name="WEB-INF"/>
                    </fileset>
                    <lib dir="lib">
                            <exclude name="somelibrary.jar"/>
                    </lib>
                    <classes dir="${build}"/>
            </war>
            <delete dir="${dist}/tmp"/>
            <antcall target="clean"/>
    </target>

Do I need to make the tmp directory?

Answer 1

You need to put the web.xml in a temporary location if you do not want to copy it directly to WebContent/WEB-INF and remove the exclude for that folder.
There is no subelement for <war> that lets you create it on the fly, as there is for the manifest.

As oers says there seems to be something strange, typo or similar.
You create “${dist}/metainf/web.xml but include “${dist}/tmp/web.xml.

If you want less lines you can replace the filter chain with:

<filterset>
    <filter token="smtp.hostname" value="${test.smtp.hostname}" />
    <filter token="smtp.port" value="${test.smtp.port}" />
</filterset>