Question

I need to write an ant task to determine if a certain file is readonly, and if it is, fail. I would like to avoid using a custom selector to do this do to the nature of our build system. Anyone have any ideas how to go about doing this? I’m using ant 1.8 + ant-contrib.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Will something like this do the trick?

<condition property="file.is.readonly">
  <not>
    <isfileselected file="${the.file.in.question}">
      <writable />
    </isfileselected>
  </not>
</condition>
<fail if="file.is.readonly" message="${the.file.in.question} is not writeable" />

This uses the condition task and the isfileselected condition (not a direct link – you’ll have to search down the page) combined with the writable selector (and reversed with a not condition).

Update:

An possibly better alternative would be:

<fail message="${the.file.in.question} is not writeable">
  <condition>
    <not>
      <isfileselected file="${the.file.in.question}">
        <writable />
      </isfileselected>
    </not>
  </condition>
</fail>

This has the check and the fail as one distinct action rather than two, so you may find it clearer, and it doesn’t require using a property name, so your namespace is cleaner.