copying multiple directories (and contents) in one shot
You can specify multiple inclusion and exclusion rules in a fileset. If you don't specify an inclusion rule, the default is everything is included, except anything that is excluded at least once by an exclude rule.
Here's an inclusive example:
<property name="src.dir" value="example" />
<property name="dest.dir" value="myInstance" />
<copy todir="${dest.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}">
<include name="lib/**" />
<include name="etc/**" />
<include name="webapps/**" />
</fileset>
</copy>
Note the **
wildcard that will bring in the full directory tree under each of the three 'leading-edge' sub-directories specified. Alternatively, if you want to specifically exclude a few directories, but copy over all others, you might omit inclusion (and thereby get the default all-inclusive behaviour) and supply a list of exclusions:
<copy todir="${dest.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}">
<exclude name="ignoreThisDir*/" />
<exclude name="ignoreThisOne*/" />
</fileset>
</copy>
You could further boil the particular example you gave down to one exclusion pattern:
<exclude name="ignore*/" />
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user331465
Updated on June 04, 2022Comments
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user331465 almost 2 years
I've been using ant for nearly a decade, but every so often I need to do something beyond my-ordinary experience. This one lacked an obvious answer (and the intuitive approaches led to dead ends)
Problem:
Copy several subdirectories (and their contents) in directory "example" to new directory "myInstance". To clarify, copy some, but not all subdirectories in the source directory.
Source directory:
example/ ignoreThisDirectory/ ignoreThisOneAlso/ lib etc/ webapps/
Attempt: Dead End This attempt at first appeared to work. It created the subdirectories lib, etc,webapps. However 'copy' did not copy their contents; i was left with empty subdirectories.
<copy todir="myInstance" > <dirset dir="example" includes="lib etc webapps"/> </copy>
Successful But Verbose In the end, I had to copy each directory individually, which seem verbose and non-DRY:
<copy todir="myInstance/etc"> <fileset dir="example/etc"/> </copy> <copy todir="myInstance/lib"> <fileset dir="example/lib" /> </copy> <copy todir="myInstance/webapps"> <fileset dir="example/webapps" /> </copy>
thanks in advance
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JasonMArcher over 13 yearsI would instead use includes to list what you want to copy.