How to publish a directory tree, so it can be retrieved with the same structure?

["KARR, DAVID" <dk...@att.com>]

I'm working on the same set of problems described in my earlier "How to publish additional metadata ..." note.  I'd appreciate any responses with concrete examples to demonstrate how I should do this.

At the conclusion of the build, I need to publish the entire contents of the "build" directory, along with a properties file ("env/default.properties") that isn't generated by the build, but which describes where the build product has to be installed before EAR assembly.  When this "build" directory is eventually retrieved at some later time, that same structure needs to be installed at the absolute path described by one of the properties in that "env/default.properties" file.

If it matters, the "build" directory contains four directories, two of which contains jar files used for different purposes, one of which contains a directory that contains a text file (special manifest file), and the last contains a directory tree of properties files.

The entire build will have several similarly structured modules.  I'm pretty sure the target that does the "ivy:publish" can be defined in a "base" build script that all the module build scripts import.

I imagine the "ivy.xml" for each module would have a "publications" element that specifies the two (?) pieces that are being published, being the "build" directory and the "env/default.properties" file.  I've never seen an example that publishes a directory, is that possible?  If not, then I would guess that I'd have to specify more processing and detail in the "ivy:publish" target, such that I would first zip up the "build" directory and the "env/default.properties" file both into a zip file and publish that as the single artifact.  Is this more likely?

I've considered the fact that the "env/default.properties" file really only holds one property (ok two, but I don't care about the other one).  It might make sense to instead define that property value in "extra" attributes in the "ivy.xml" and drop the "env/default.properties" file entirely.  However, that sort of combines two concerns, being the description of the artifact and its dependencies, along with where the artifact gets installed to for EAR assembly.

One minor detail: I didn't see in the "publish" documentation how you specify where the "ivysettings.xml" file is found.  Where is that specified for this?