<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. --> <html lang="en"> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../stylesheets/style.css"> <title>Symlink Task</title> </head> <body> <h2 id="symlink">Symlink</h2> <h3>Description</h3> <p>Manages symbolic links on platforms where Java supports symbolic links. Can be used to make an individual link, delete a link, create multiple links from properties files, or create properties files describing links in the specified directories. Existing files are not overwritten by default.</p> <p><a href="../Types/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s are used to select a set of links to record, or a set of property files to create links from.</p> <h3>Parameters</h3> <table class="attr"> <tr> <th scope="col">Attribute</th> <th scope="col">Description</th> <th scope="col">Required</th> </tr> <tr> <td>action</td> <td>The type of action to perform, may be <q>single</q>, "<q>record</q>, <q>recreate</q> or <q>delete</q>.</td> <td>No; defaults to <q>single</q></td> </tr> <tr> <td>link</td> <td>The name of the link to be created or deleted.<br/><strong>Note</strong>: this attribute is resolved against the current working directory rather than the project's <var>basedir</var> for historical reasons. It is recommended you always use an absolute path or a path like <samp>${basedir}/some-path</samp> as its value. </td> <td>Yes, for <var>action</var>=<q>single</q> or <q>delete</q>; ignored in other actions</td> </tr> <tr> <td>resource</td> <td>The resource the link should point to.</td> <td>Yes, for <var>action</var>=<q>single</q>; ignored in other actions</td> </tr> <tr> <td>linkfilename</td> <td>The name of the properties file to create in each included directory.</td> <td>Yes, for <var>action</var>=<q>record</q>; ignored in other actions</td> </tr> <tr> <td>overwrite</td> <td>Overwrite existing files or not. If overwrite is set to <q>true</q>, then any existing file, specified by the link attribute, will be overwritten irrespective of whether or not the existing file is a symbolic link.</td> <td>No; defaults to <q>false</q></td> </tr> <tr> <td>failonerror</td> <td>Stop build if true, log a warning message, but do not stop the build, when the an error occurs if <q>false</q>.</td> <td>No; defaults to <q>true</q></td> </tr> </table> <h3>Parameters specified as nested elements</h3> <h4>fileset</h4> <p><a href="../Types/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s are used when <var>action</var>=<q>record</q> to select directories and link names to be recorded. They are also used when <var>action</var>=<q>recreate</q> to specify both the name of the property files to be processed, and the directories in which they can be found. At least one fileset is required for each case.</p> <h3>Examples</h3> <p>Make a link named <samp>foo</samp> to a resource named <samp>bar.foo</samp> in <samp>subdir</samp>:</p> <pre><symlink link="${dir.top}/foo" resource="${dir.top}/subdir/bar.foo"/></pre> <p>Record all links in <samp>subdir</samp> and it's descendants in files named <samp>dir.links</samp></p> <pre> <symlink action="record" linkfilename="dir.links"> <fileset dir="${dir.top}" includes="subdir/**"/> </symlink></pre> <p>Recreate the links recorded in the previous example:</p> <pre> <symlink action="recreate"> <fileset dir="${dir.top}" includes="subdir/**/dir.links"/> </symlink></pre> <p>Delete a link named <samp>foo</samp>:</p> <pre><symlink action="delete" link="${dir.top}/foo"/></pre> <p><strong>Java 1.2 and earlier</strong>: Due to limitations on executing system level commands in Java versions earlier than 1.3 this task may have difficulty operating with a relative path in <code>ANT_HOME</code>. The typical symptom is an <code>IOException</code> where Apache Ant can't find <samp>/some/working/directory${ANT_HOME}/bin/antRun</samp> or something similar. The workaround is to change your <code>ANT_HOME</code> environment variable to an absolute path, which will remove the <samp>/some/working/directory</samp> portion of the above path and allow Ant to find the correct command line execution script.</p> <p><strong>Note</strong>: <em>Since Ant 1.10.2</em>, this task relies on the symbolic link support introduced in Java 7 through the <code class="code">java.nio.file.Files</code> APIs</p> </body> </html>