ant javac and excludesfile

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why is it that Ant describes the javac task as having an excludesfile option, but doesn’t mention on the same page what the format of said file should be?! separated by commas, like normal exludes? on a line by themselves? what

where do i find the format of excludesfile? i guess i’ll just try and see, but i’d rather get it right the first time. maybe i’ll ask the lazyweb. :)

symptomatic of a lot of apache documentation (where the world do i find the password for the admin user on a tomcat install, for example!!! circular documentation)

  • http://stefanbodewig.blogger.de/ Stefan Bodewig

    It is because the paragraph starting with “It is possible to refine the set of files that are being compiled.” on http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/javac.html says you should go read the page on “directory-based tasks” for more details. And there you’ll ger re-routed to FileSet’s docs (not very obvious) which then will tell you:

    excludesfile: the name of a file; each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern.

  • http://www.smartbrother.org jon

    ah. i went as far as “directory based tasks”, and admittedly i was on my way out so i was hoping to skim and quickly find the answer…actually i was more looking for an “example” section (which, all being said, is one good thing about the Ant documentation–inclusion of examples).

    thanks for the pointer–i particularly need it this morning!

    oh yeah, especially thanks for stopping by! :D

    j.

  • http://www.smartbrother.org jon

    Its interesting to note that i haven’t used an external file for my fileset before, and i’ve been using Ant for years…and I’ve been consulting this page for quite a long time, lol.