Develop Reference

ANT unzip every jar except one

I have an ANT target that unzips every jar with a "for" task, but I want to exclude a specific jar called Neo.jar. This is what I have so far, but it is unzipping every single jar that is available to it.
<target name="unzipjars">
<for param="jar">
<sequential>
<unzip dest="${expanded.dirs}" src="#{jar}">
<exclude name="Neo.jar/**"/>
</unzip>
</sequential>
</for>
</target>
I was looking at trying to exclude something from "for param="jar"" but I don't think anything like that exists. The "exclude name" for Neo.jar doesn't seem to work because I believe it doesn't think it is a directory because it is a jar

As you can see here, it's quietly easy.
All you need is to add the tag patternset to your configuration (and you don't need to iterate by the way...). Like this:
<target name="unzipjars">
<unzip dest="${expanded.dirs}">
<patternset>
<exclude name="**/Neo.jar"/>
</patternset>
<fileset dir="${jar}">
<include name="**/*.*"/>
</fileset>
</unzip>
</target>

You can use the if task (http://ant-contrib.sourceforge.net/tasks/tasks/if.html) to filter out the Neo.jar file. For example
<for param="jar">
<sequential>
<if>
<not><equals arg1="#{jar}" arg2="Neo.jar" /></not>
<then><!-- unzip the jar --></then>
</if>
</sequential>
</for>

Confusion with ant regex at the time of filename selector

I am trying to select all jars from the current directory. I am getting confused between:
**/*.jar
*.jar
I assumed *.jar will work the same as **/*.jar. However the following examples are working differently:
<path id="master-classpath-common-lib" >
<fileset dir=".">
<include name="**/*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</path>
<path id="master-classpath-common-lib" >
<fileset dir=".">
<include name="*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</path>
For this case *.jar is not working at all.
Can anyone please give some hint on this.

*.jar means all the .jar files in only within the base directory, the directory specified in <fileset dir="${master.classpath}/lib">. This will not include the files in the subdirectories.
In **/*.jar, ** (used as the directory name) is a special feature, that means all the (nested) subdirectories.
Check out an example with explanation here.

When are Ant path references set?

When I use a path reference ID, Ant seems to evaluate any variables inside the definition before any tasks run. For example, ${common.dist} and ${common.lib} below seem to be evaluated before any tasks run.
<path id="compile.classpath">
<fileset dir="lib">
<include name="*.jar" />
</fileset>
<fileset dir="${common.dist}">
<include name="*.jar" />
</fileset>
<fileset dir="${common.lib}">
<include name="*.jar" />
</fileset>
</path>
In the Ant output I see something like this:
Adding reference: compile.classpath
Property "common.dist" has not been set
Property "common.lib" has not been set
...
Build sequence for target(s) `package' is [...]
Complete build sequence is [...]
This makes it seem like the path reference is being processed before any targets are run.
I have a compile target like this:
<target name="compile" depends="init,common">
<javac destdir="build/classes" debug="true" deprecation="true" optimize="true">
<src path="src/java" />
<classpath>
<path refid="compile.classpath" />
</classpath>
</javac>
</target>
If I copy the guts of the path reference into the classpath element inside the compile target, things seem to work fine.

Any tasks outside a target are executed on every build, in order of appearance in the build.xml, before any targets are run. If you want to use properties in a <path> defined outside a target then you need to put the <property> task that defines the properties also outside a target, and before the <path>. If you need to load the properties within a target then you'll have to put the <path> definition inside a target too (either the same one or one that runs after the one defining the properties).
See this question (and my answer) for more details.

The answer is in the Ant manual - path like structures:
By default a path like structure will re-evaluate all nested resource
collections whenever it is used, which may lead to unnecessary
re-scanning of the filesystem ...
I think you maybe forgot to set the ${common.dist} and ${common.lib} properties. They should be outside any target:
<property name="common.dist" location="dist"/>
<property name="common.lib" location="lib"/>

build.xml ant question

I am getting the following exception when running an applet:
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-4" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: ice/net/SnapshotCacheManager
but the file is inside the jar.
I searched online and found it might be related to the applet not looking in the current directory and i need to add .; to the CLASSPATH but i am not sure how to add it to the build.xml
Thanks
Doron
Edit: Finally I figured it out, it wasn't an ant problem or the build XML, I got this exception because I signed two jars containing the same package differently, so there was a collision, not a very informative exception....

it might be useful to see what is in your current build.xml file, but the section you probably want to look at is the <target> element specifically the <src path> and <fileset> elements. Here is a VERY rough example with some guiding variables.
<property name="classes.home" value="/myproject/src"/>
<target name="compile_myproject" depends="clean">
<javac destdir="${classes.home}" debug="off" optimize="on" deprecation="on">
<classpath>
<fileset dir="/location/of/jars/">
<include name="*.jar"/>
<exclude name="jar-I-dont-want.jar"/>
</fileset>
<fileset dir="/location/of/axis2/jars">
<include name="**/*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</classpath>
<src path="${classes.home}"/>
<include name="/test/**/*.java"/>
<include name="other/location/*.java"/>
<exclude name="/debug/and/useless/files/**/*.java"/>
</javac>
</target>
note that ${classes.home} is a special variable defined at the top of the build.xml file. Many variables can be used to make things easier and specify relative paths.

Ant copy classpath jars to a directory

I'm sure this has either been asked before or is pretty straightforward. But for whatever reason, I cannot seem to make it work. I want to use ant to copy the ${build.classpath} (which contains a colon separated list of jars) to the ${output.dir}/myapp/WEB-INF/lib.
I have this right now and it doesn't seem to work:
<copy toDir="${output.dir}/myapp/WEB-INF/lib">
<fileset file="${build.classpath}" />
</copy>
It treats the whole classpath as one file. How do I get this to work?

The Ant Manual on the copy task contains the answer for your problem. One of the example snippets it provides:
Collect all items from the current CLASSPATH setting into a destination directory, flattening the directory structure.
<copy todir="dest" flatten="true">
<path>
<pathelement path="${java.class.path}"/>
</path>
</copy>

I think somethink like this should work:
<copy todir="${output.dir}/myapp/WEB-INF/lib" verbose="yes" flatten="yes" failonerror="no">
<fileset dir="${build.classpath}">
<include name="*.jar" />
</fileset>
</copy>
or with wildcard in include: <include name="**/*.jar" />

I think you should put all your colon separated jar files to one root folder. If it is not possible then create a separate task that put those jar files into one folder(may be temporary). And assign ${build.classpath} to that folder. Use <fileset dir="${build.classpath}"/> in your copy clause.
I hope, it should help.