Ant User Manual

Jar

Description

Jars a set of files.

The basedir attribute is the reference directory from where to jar.

Note that file permissions will not be stored in the resulting jarfile.

It is possible to refine the set of files that are being jarred. This can be done with the includes, includesfile, excludes, excludesfile and defaultexcludes attributes. With the includes or includesfile attribute you specify the files you want to have included by using patterns. The exclude or excludesfile attribute is used to specify the files you want to have excluded. This is also done with patterns. And finally with the defaultexcludes attribute, you can specify whether you want to use default exclusions or not. See the section on directory based tasks, on how the inclusion/exclusion of files works, and how to write patterns.

This task forms an implicit FileSet and supports all attributes of <fileset> (dir becomes basedir) as well as the nested <include>, <exclude> and <patternset> elements.

You can also use nested file sets for more flexibility, and specify multiple ones to merge together different trees of files into one JAR. The extended fileset attributes from the zip task are also available in the jar task. See the Zip task for more details and examples.

If the manifest is omitted, a simple one will be supplied by Ant. You should not include META-INF/MANIFEST.MF in your set of files.

The whenempty parameter controls what happens when no files match. If create (the default), the JAR is created anyway with only a manifest. If skip, the JAR is not created and a warning is issued. If fail, the JAR is not created and the build is halted with an error.

(The Jar task is a shortcut for specifying the manifest file of a JAR file. The same thing can be accomplished by using the fullpath attribute of a zipfileset in a Zip task. The one difference is that if the manifest attribute is not specified, the Jar task will include an empty one for you.)

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
jarfile	the jar-file to create.	Yes
basedir	the directory from which to jar the files.	No
compress	Not only store data but also compress them, defaults to true	No
includes	comma separated list of patterns of files that must be included. All files are included when omitted.	No
includesfile	the name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an include pattern	No
excludes	comma separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded. No files (except default excludes) are excluded when omitted.	No
excludesfile	the name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern	No
defaultexcludes	indicates whether default excludes should be used or not ("yes"/"no"). Default excludes are used when omitted.	No
manifest	the manifest file to use.	No
whenempty	Behavior to use if no files match.	No

Examples

  <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar" basedir="${build}/classes"/>

jars all files in the ${build}/classes directory into a file called app.jar in the ${dist}/lib directory.

  <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar"
       basedir="${build}/classes"
       excludes="**/Test.class"
  />

jars all files in the ${build}/classes directory into a file called app.jar in the ${dist}/lib directory. Files with the name Test.class are excluded.

  <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar"
       basedir="${build}/classes"
       includes="mypackage/test/**"
       excludes="**/Test.class"
  />

jars all files in the ${build}/classes directory into a file called app.jar in the ${dist}/lib directory. Only files under the directory mypackage/test are used, and files with the name Test.class are excluded.

  <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/app.jar">
    <fileset dir="${build}/classes"
             excludes="**/Test.class"
    />
    <fileset dir="${src}/resources"/>
  </jar>

jars all files in the ${build}/classes directory and also in the ${src}/resources directory together into a file called app.jar in the ${dist}/lib directory. Files with the name Test.class are excluded. If there are files such as ${build}/classes/mypackage/MyClass.class and ${src}/resources/mypackage/image.gif, they will appear in the same directory in the JAR (and thus be considered in the same package by Java).