CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ant
A Dark Divided Gem
A Dark Divided Gem

Reputation: 446

Use Ant to change the last modified date of a file

I am currently using YUI to compress JavaScript files via Ant:

<apply executable="java" parallel="false">
    <fileset dir="." includes="${build.web.dir}/js/*.js"/>
    <arg line="-jar"/>
    <arg path="yuicompressor-2.4.7.jar"/>           
    <srcfile/>
    <arg line="-o"/>
    <mapper type="glob" from="*.js" to="*-min.js"/>
    <targetfile/>      
</apply>

However the newly created *-min.js files now have newer "Last Modified" dates. This becomes a problem when I rollout the files using RSYNC which compares the last modified date to determine whether or not the file should be updated.

Ideally I would like to preserve the last modified date so the rollout doesn't update all the files unnecessarily and also overwriting newer files on the server (It has happened before).

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2708

Answers (2)

A Dark Divided Gem
A Dark Divided Gem

Reputation: 446

Thanks to @martin-clayton I was able to use the Touch Task to restore the newly created minified files to their original Last Modified dates.

The following is a parameterised ant call allowing both CSS and JS files to be easily minified:

<target name="minify-filetype" >
    <echo>Minimise all ${filetype} files</echo>
    <apply executable="java" parallel="false">
        <fileset dir="." includes="${build.web.dir}/${filetype}/*.${filetype}"/>
        <arg line="-jar"/>
        <arg path="../../../etc/ant/trunk/lib/yuicompressor-2.4.7.jar"/>            
        <srcfile/>
        <arg line="-o"/>
        <mapper type="glob" from="*.${filetype}" to="*-min.${filetype}"/>
        <targetfile/>      
    </apply>

    <echo>Convert minified files back to original Last Modified dates</echo>
    <touch>
        <fileset dir="." includes="${build.web.dir}/${filetype}/*.${filetype}"
                         excludes="${build.web.dir}/${filetype}/*-min.${filetype}"/>
        <mapper type="glob" from="*.${filetype}" to="*-min.${filetype}"/>
    </touch>

    <!-- moving *-min.js and creating *.js files (overwriting orginal and deleting *-min) -->
    <move todir="${build.web.dir}/${filetype}/" overwrite="true" preservelastmodified="true">
        <fileset dir="${build.web.dir}/${filetype}/" />
        <mapper type="glob" from="*-min.${filetype}" to="*.${filetype}"/>
    </move>
</target>

Upvotes: 1

martin clayton
martin clayton

Reputation: 78125

Suggest you look into Ant selectors, most likely the depend selector. They will let you restrict the compression to only those files where the uncompressed javascript is newer than the previous compressed version, if you see what I mean.

For example, something like:

<apply executable="java" parallel="false">
    <fileset dir="." includes="${build.web.dir}/js/*.js"
                     excludes="${build.web.dir}/js/*-min.js">
        <depend targetdir=".">
            <globmapper from="*.js" to="*-min.js"/>
        </depend>
    </fileset>
    <arg line="-jar"/>
    <arg path="yuicompressor-2.4.7.jar"/>           
    <srcfile/>
    <arg line="-o"/>
    <mapper type="glob" from="*.js" to="*-min.js"/>
    <targetfile/>      
</apply>

Upvotes: 1

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