Cab Task

Cab

Description

The cab task creates Microsoft cab archive files. It is invoked similar to the jar or zip tasks. This task will work on Windows using the external cabarc tool (provided by Microsoft) which must be located in your executable path.

To use this task on other platforms you need to download and compile libcabinet from http://trill.cis.fordham.edu/~barbacha/cabinet_library/.

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.

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
cabfile	the name of the cab file to create.	Yes
basedir	the directory to start archiving files from.	No
verbose	set to "yes" if you want to see the output from the cabarc tool. defaults to "no".	No
compress	set to "no" to store files without compressing. defaults to "yes".	No
options	use to set additional command-line options for the cabarc tool. should not normally be necessary.	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

Parameters specified as nested elements

fileset

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

Examples

<cab cabfile="${dist}/manual.cab"
     basedir="htdocs/manual"
  />

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

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

cabs all files in the htdocs/manual directory into a file called manual.cab in the ${dist} directory. Files in the directory mydocs, or files with the name todo.html are excluded.

<cab cabfile="${dist}/manual.cab"
     basedir="htdocs/manual"
     includes="api/**/*.html"
     excludes="**/todo.html"
     verbose="yes"
  />

Cab all files in the htdocs/manual directory into a file called manual.cab in the ${dist} directory. Only html files under the directory api are archived, and files with the name todo.html are excluded. Output from the cabarc tool is displayed in the build output.

<cab cabfile="${dist}/manual.cab"
     verbose="yes">
  <fileset
       dir="htdocs/manual"
       includes="api/**/*.html"
       excludes="**/todo.html"
  />
</cab>

is equivalent to the example above.