[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Ant`s equivalent of jar -M is to not use <jar>, the only point of > <jar> is that it adds a manifest and makes sure that there is one, > there is nothing <jar> would do, that cannot be done using <zip>.
Thanks for info on <jar> vs. <zip>. I'll be using <zip> in my build files, but I disagree with the design decision made here. From a readability standpoint, it makes more sense for me to use the <jar> task since that's what I'm doing - creating jars, not zips. It seems that the whenempty="skip" attribute should check two things: 1) is there a user-specified manifest and 2) are there any files that match? If both of these fail, then the jar file should not be created. If there is a user-specified manifest, the jar file should always be created - the reasoning being that 1) jar files always have at least a manifest, but 2) Ant shouldn't be creating something from nothing. Perhaps the various actions for the whenempty attribute (skip, fail, create) should be modified for jars instead of disabled entirely. How they function is dependent on the existence of a manifest, and a distinction (in terms of functional behavior) exists between a user-specified manifest and Ant's auto-generated manifest. Consequently, we end up with an intelligent <jar> task. I'm currently working on a modified <jar> task with these changes; unless others out there are strongly opposed to modifiying how the whenempty attribute functions, I'll post the patch when finished. Kyle
