Question

We have quite a big tree of source code, parts of it are deployed as two separate jar files. We need an easy control of what goes to which jar.

So far we do this by <exclude name="" /> and <include name="" /> tags, but this is quite inconvenient. The best option would be a separate config file with all the packages listed which we could comment out when needed, say with a ‘#’ character.

Does something similar exist or do we have to write a new ant task that reads such a file and runs a <jar> task?

Answer 1

ANT includes and excludes can be managed with external files and referenced in a fileset using includesfile and excludesfile attributes.

includesfile the name of a file; each
line of this file is taken to be an
include pattern.
excludesfile the
name of a file; each line of this file
is taken to be an exclude pattern.

For example:

 <jar destfile="${dist}/lib/app1.jar">
   <fileset dir=".">
    <includesfile name="app1.properties"/>
   </fileset>
  </jar>
 <jar destfile="${dist}/lib/app2.jar">
   <fileset dir=".">
    <includesfile name="app2.properties"/>
   </fileset>
  </jar>