Ant copy files.

Question

Is there any command in ant to copy files from one folder structure to another without checking the last modified date/time overwriting files. Basically I want all extra files from folder A to folder B. That is: no files of folder B are replaced but extra files of folder A comes to folder B.

I saw "ant copy" and "ant move" commands, but didn't help. Any suggestions.

Answer 1

If there isn't an elegant solution you can always do it in a sequence:

1. <move> folder <B> to <C>
2. <copy> files of folder <A> to <B>
3. <copy> files of folder <C> to <B> using overwrite=true

(Do things the other way around, replacing the new files, not the old ones)

Answer 2

Just use the <copy> tag with a fileset as **/* and set the overwrite attribute to false explicitly. I use this all the time:

<copy todir="/your/target" overwrite="false">
  <fileset dir="/your/source">
    <include name="**/*" />
  </fileset>
</copy>

Answer 3

The simple solution to your problem is to use the overwrite parameter to the copy command. This will ensure that files are not replaced

    <copy todir="B" verbose="true" overwrite="false">
        <fileset dir="A"/>
    </copy>

The more complicated example is to use a fileset selector

    <copy todir="B" verbose="true">
        <fileset dir="A">
            <present targetdir="B" present="srconly"/>
            <date datetime="01/01/2001 12:00 AM" when="after"/>
        </fileset>
    </copy>

In this example I've used a present selector to choose a file isn't present in the target directory (functionally the same as an overwrite check) and I've added an extra date condition to test if the file has been modfied since a certain date.

The selector list is quite extensive.