Question

What does the includes="**/*.js"/ mean in the below merge code form an Ant file.

<target name="merge grid">
    <echo>${grid.file}</echo>
    <concat destfile="${grid.file}" fixlastline="yes" append="no">
    <fileset dir="${js.src.dir}/dvr/components/grid/" includes="**/*.js"/>
    </concat>
</target>

Also what does this part mean :

<target name="merge" depends="merge grid, merge solids"/> 

Answer 1

In the fileset

**/*.js

matches files in the filesystem. The ** part means ‘in any directory’ (under the directory mentioned in the dir attribute). The *.js matches any file ending in .js. Overall, the fileset includes any .js file found in a sub-directory of ${js.src.dir}/dvr/components/grid/ recursively. See Directory-based Tasks. (The trailing / is not part of the includes pattern, it is the closing part of the fileset element in the XML:

<fileset ... attributes ... />

The merge grid target, therefore will concatenate all .js files into a single destination file of name defined in the property grid.file.

The target is the opening of the definition of an Ant target, which is a sequence of Ant tasks that comprise a distinct step in the build. The depends attribute lists other targets – in this case merge grid and merge solids – that must be executed (if needed) before the merge target itself. See Targets.