Question

Is it possible to execute an apply on a file set and have ant print the command it is executing?

For example:

<target name="test">
    <apply executable="ls" failonerror="true" verbose="true" ignoremissing="false">
        <fileset dir=".">
            <include name="*.xml" />
        </fileset>

        <arg line="-la" />
    </apply>
</target>

I would like the output to be something close to the following, with the key line being:

[apply] ls -la ./build.xml"

E.g.

Buildfile: /home/abarker/NetBeansProjects/TestProject/build.xml
test:
    [apply] ls -la ./build.xml
    [apply] -rw-r--r-- 1 abarker abarker 29231 Feb 13 11:29 /home/abarker/NetBeansProjects/TestProject/build.xml
    [apply] Applied ls to 1 file and 0 directories.

Answer 1

There are several ideas I have:

• You can use the outputproperty parameter. This will give you the output of the command in the <apply> task.

• You can use fileset reference instead of an actual fileset.

Like this:

<property name="apply.files.prop" refid='apply.files'/>
<echo>The files you're operating on are "${apply.files.prop}"</echo>

<apply executable="ls" failonerror="true" verbose="true" ignoremissing="false">
    <fileset refid="apply.files"/>
    <arg line="-la" />
</apply>

You can then look at the fileset reference apply.files to see what files the <apply> task is operating on.

You can always add the -debug and -verbose flag when you run ant. This will print exactly what you want and then some — then some a whole lot. I wish there was a way to turn verbose mode on and off on a particular task, but I don’t know how to do that — at least an easy way to do that.