Make Ant's delete task fail when a directory exists and is not deleted but not when it doesn't exist
- by Tim Visher
I have tho following clean function in my build script and I'd like to know how I can improve it.
<target name="clean" description="Clean output directories.">
<!-- Must not fail on error because it fails if directories don't exist.
Is there really no better way to do this? -->
<delete includeEmptyDirs="true" failonerror="false">
<fileset dir="${main.build.directory}" />
<fileset dir="dist" />
<fileset dir="${documentation.build.directory}" />
<fileset dir="/build-testing" />
</delete>
</target>
Specifically regarding my comment, I'm unhappy with the fact that I can't run this on a fresh box because the directory structure hasn't been set up yet by the other targets. We run the build in such a way that it entirely recreates the structures necessary for testing and deployment every time to avoid stale class files and such. With the way that delete currently is set up, a failure to delete a file does not fail the build and I'd like it to. I don't want it to fail the build if the file doesn't exist though. If it doesn't exist then what I'm asking it to do has already happened.
Thoughts?
