Reusing list of zipfileset statements in ANT

Question

I have a build.xml where I put together some fat runnable jars with targets similar to:

<target name="create_myapp_jar">
  <jar destfile="./production/myapp.jar" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">
    <manifest>
      <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.something.entrypoints.MyApp"/>
      <attribute name="Class-Path" value="."/>
    </manifest>
    <fileset dir="./classes"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-cli-1.2.jar"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-codec-1.10-sources.jar"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-codec-1.10.jar"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-io-2.4.jar"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-lang-2.6.jar"/>
    <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-pool2-2.2.jar"/>

    lots and lots of more JARs here....
</target>

The code was generated by Eclipse (Export runnable Jar) and with minor changes by me.

The list of Jars that are included is quite long actually. I build several of these fat-jars, and I was wondering how I could avoid listing the <zipfileset> statements for each target?

How can I smack them all together and then reference them from each fat-jar build target? All in the purpose of not letting my build.xml swell to hundreds and hundreds of lines. Also the pain of adding a new JAR to each of the targets would go away if I could have one definition somewhere.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

A zipgroupfileset can be used to accomplish this:

<target name="create_myapp_jar">
    <jar destfile="./production/myapp.jar" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">
        <manifest>
          <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.something.entrypoints.MyApp"/>
          <attribute name="Class-Path" value="."/>
        </manifest>
        <fileset dir="./classes"/>
        <zipgroupfileset dir="lib/" includes="*.jar" excludes="META-INF/*.SF" />
    </jar>
</target>

If you need to save the Jar fileset for later reuse, you can do:

<fileset dir="lib" id="lib_jars">
    <include name="*.jar"/>
</fileset>
<jar destfile="./production/myapp.jar" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">
    <manifest>
      <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.something.entrypoints.MyApp"/>
      <attribute name="Class-Path" value="."/>
    </manifest>
    <fileset dir="./classes"/>
    <zipgroupfileset refid="lib_jars" />
</jar>

EDIT:

It seems that the excludes only excludes files in the dir directory, not entries from the Jar files themselves, as explained in Ant: Exclude files from merged jar file. There is an answer there that provides an easy workaround.

Thanks! That solves my immediate problem, however this only works if the jars are located in the same directory (which is the most common situation of course). If I would want it, is there anyway I could "group" a list of jars, give them a name and then reference the name instead? — Peter Andersson, Apr 01 '16 at 10:16
When running, I got the "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.SecurityException: Invalid signature file digest for Manifest main attributes", does the exclude really work? — Peter Andersson, Apr 01 '16 at 10:18
@PeterAndersson You're right. The `excludes` does not work as expected here for `zipgroupfileset`. I updated the answer. — M A, Apr 01 '16 at 10:27

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '16 at 10:19

as far as I understand, your zipfileset entries list is always the same for each built jars ? Maybe you should consider making a macro that contains the zipfileset entries and use variables to adjust the macro for the context of each target:

<macrodef name="make-jar">
    <attribute name="destfile"/>
    <attribute name="mainclass"/>
    <attribute name="classpath"/>
    <attribute name="obj.dir"/>
    <sequential>
        <jar destfile="@{destfile}" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">
            <manifest>
                <attribute name="Main-Class" value="@{mainclass}"/>
                <attribute name="Class-Path" value="@{classpath}"/>
            </manifest>
            <fileset dir="@{obj.dir}"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-cli-1.2.jar"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-codec-1.10-sources.jar"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-codec-1.10.jar"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-io-2.4.jar"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-lang-2.6.jar"/>
            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="./lib/commons-pool2-2.2.jar"/>

            lots and lots of more JARs here....  
        </jar>
    </sequential>
</macrodef>

<target name="create_myapp_jar">
    <make-jar destfile="./production/myapp.jar" mainclass="com.something.entrypoints.MyApp" classpath="." obj.dir="./classes"/>
</target>

This worked beautifully, and I happen to have a thing for macros too.... a shame I can't mark both answers as "Correct". Have to think about which one is the best. — Peter Andersson, Apr 01 '16 at 10:30

Reusing list of zipfileset statements in ANT

2 Answers2