How to add/update files in a tar file?

[Markus Albrecht <ma...@v-connect.com>]

Hello Ant Users!

I've a project setup where I collect files from two different locations
for a release build.
Currently I'm using a jar file a release file.
And in the build.xml file for the ant I just included two fileset
elements and this works pretty well:
		<jar jarfile="release.jar">
			<fileset dir="${home1}">
				<patternset>
                                   ...       
				</patternset>
			</fileset>
			<fileset dir="${home2}">
				<patternset>
                                   ...
 				</patternset>
			</fileset>
		</jar>
Although I'd like to switch to a tar file, since it preservers access
rights for unix systems.
How can I build a tar file to which to include two filesets as in the
jar case.
Or, optionally set up two tar commands where the second command
adds/updates the existing tar file.
How can I add/update to an existing tar file more files?


Can anyone help me on this?
Thanks,
Markus Albrecht

--
Fortune of the day:
"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
		-- Franco Spisani

Re: How to add/update files in a tar file?

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>]

Markus Albrecht <ma...@v-connect.com> wrote:

> Although I'd like to switch to a tar file, since it preservers
> access rights for unix systems.

The <tar> task doesn't, you will have to switch to <exec>, <execon> or
(if using development versions) <transform> and use the tar executable
for that.

This would something like

<execon executable="tar" parallel="true">
  <arg value="-u" />
  <arg value="-f" />
  <arg file="release.tar" />
  <fileset dir="${home1}">
    <patternset ... />
  </fileset>
  <fileset dir="${home2}">
    <patternset ... />
  </fileset>
</execon>

or using undocumentated and not really stable (in terms of API) stuff
that has been added after the 1.2 release:

<transform executable="tar" parallel="true" dest=".">
  <arg value="-u" />
  <arg value="-f" />
  <arg file="release.tar" />
  <fileset dir="${home1}">
    <patternset ... />
  </fileset>
  <fileset dir="${home2}">
    <patternset ... />
  </fileset>
  <mapper type="merge" to="release.tar" />
</transform>

the latter will only pass the files that are actually newer that the
archive on the command line.

> How can I add/update to an existing tar file more files?

You can't using <tar>, again, you'll need to use the command line.

Stefan