Zip Task

Zip

Description

Creates a zipfile.

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

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

It is possible to refine the set of files that are being zipped. 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.

Or, you may place within it nested file sets, or references to file sets. In this case basedir is optional; the implicit file set is only used if basedir is set. You may use any mixture of the implicit file set (with basedir set, and optional attributes like includes and optional subelements like <include>); explicit nested <fileset> elements so long as at least one fileset total is specified. The ZIP file will only reflect the relative paths of files within each fileset. The Zip task and its derivatives know a special form of a fileset named zipfileset that has additional attributes (described below).

The Zip task also supports the merging of multiple zip files into the zip file. This is possible through either the src attribute of any nested filesets or by using the special nested fileset zipgroupfileset.

The update parameter controls what happens if the ZIP file already exists. When set to yes, the ZIP file is updated with the files specified. (New files are added; old files are replaced with the new versions.) When set to no (the default) the ZIP file is overwritten if any of the files that would be added to the archive are newer than the entries inside the archive. Please note that ZIP files store file modification times with a granularity of two seconds. If a file is less than two seconds newer than the entry in the archive, Ant will not consider it newer.

The whenempty parameter controls what happens when no files match. If skip (the default), the ZIP is not created and a warning is issued. If fail, the ZIP is not created and the build is halted with an error. If create, an empty ZIP file (explicitly zero entries) is created, which should be recognized as such by compliant ZIP manipulation tools.

This task will now use the platform's default character encoding for filenames - this is consistent with the command line ZIP tools, but causes problems if you try to open them from within Java and your filenames contain non US-ASCII characters. Use the encoding attribute and set it to UTF8 to create zip files that can safely be read by Java.

Starting with Ant 1.5.2, <zip> can store Unix permissions inside the archive (see description of the filemode and dirmode attributes for <zipfileset>). Unfortunately there is no portable way to store these permissions. Ant uses the algorithm used by Info-Zip's implementation of the zip and unzip commands - these are the default versions of zip and unzip for many Unix and Unix-like systems.

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
destfile	the zip-file to create.	Exactly one of the two.
zipfile	the deprecated old name of destfile.	Exactly one of the two.
basedir	the directory from which to zip the files.	No
compress	Not only store data but also compress them, defaults to true. Unless you set the keepcompression attribute to false, this will apply to the entire archive, not only the files you've added while updating.	No
keepcompression	For entries coming from existing archives (like nested zipfilesets or while updating the archive), keep the compression as it has been originally instead of using the compress attribute. Defaults false. Since Ant 1.6	No
encoding	The character encoding to use for filenames inside the zip file. For a list of possible values see http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/internat/encoding.doc.html. Defaults to the platform's default character encoding.	No
filesonly	Store only file entries, defaults to false	No
includes	comma- or space-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- or space-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
update	indicates whether to update or overwrite the destination file if it already exists. Default is "false".	No
whenempty	behavior when no files match. Valid values are "fail", "skip", and "create". Default is "skip".	No
duplicate	behavior when a duplicate file is found. Valid values are "add", "preserve", and "fail". The default value is "add".	No

Parameters specified as nested elements

fileset

The zip task supports any number of nested <fileset> elements to specify the files to be included in the archive.

zipfileset

The zip task supports any number of nested <zipfileset> elements to specify the files to be included in the archive.

zipgroupfileset

A <zipgroupfileset> allows for multiple zip files to be merged into the archive. Each file found in this fileset is added to the archive the same way that zipfileset src files are added.

Examples

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip"
       basedir="htdocs/manual"
  />

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory into a file called manual.zip in the ${dist} directory.

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip"
       basedir="htdocs/manual"
       update="true"
  />

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory into a file called manual.zip in the ${dist} directory. If manual.zip doesn't exist, it is created; otherwise it is updated with the new/changed files.

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip"
       basedir="htdocs/manual"
       excludes="mydocs/**, **/todo.html"
  />

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory. Files in the directory mydocs, or files with the name todo.html are excluded.

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip"
       basedir="htdocs/manual"
       includes="api/**/*.html"
       excludes="**/todo.html"
  />

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory. Only html files under the directory api are zipped, and files with the name todo.html are excluded.

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip">
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual"/>
    <fileset dir="." includes="ChangeLog.txt"/>
  </zip>

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory, and also adds the file ChangeLog.txt in the current directory. ChangeLog.txt will be added to the top of the ZIP file, just as if it had been located at htdocs/manual/ChangeLog.txt.

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip">
    <zipfileset dir="htdocs/manual" prefix="docs/user-guide"/>
    <zipfileset dir="." includes="ChangeLog27.txt" fullpath="docs/ChangeLog.txt"/>
    <zipfileset src="examples.zip" includes="**/*.html" prefix="docs/examples"/>
  </zip>

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory into the docs/user-guide directory in the archive, adds the file ChangeLog27.txt in the current directory as docs/ChangeLog.txt, and includes all the html files in examples.zip under docs/examples. The archive might end up containing the files:

    docs/user-guide/html/index.html
    docs/ChangeLog.txt
    docs/examples/index.html

The code

  <zip destfile="${dist}/manual.zip">
    <zipfileset dir="htdocs/manual" prefix="docs/user-guide"/>
    <zipgroupfileset dir="." includes="examples*.zip"/>
  </zip>

zips all files in the htdocs/manual directory into the docs/user-guide directory in the archive and includes all the files in any file that maches examples*.zip, such as all files within examples1.zip or examples_for_brian.zip.