## Chown

Since Apache Ant 1.6.

### Description

Changes the owner of a file or all files inside specified directories. Right now it has effect only under Unix. The owner attribute is equivalent to the corresponding argument for the `chown` command.

FileSets, DirSets or FileLists can be specified using nested `<fileset>`, `<dirset>` and `<filelist>` elements.

Since Ant 1.7, this task supports arbitrary resource collections as nested elements.

By default this task will use a single invocation of the underlying `chown` command. If you are working on a large number of files this may result in a command line that is too long for your operating system. If you encounter such problems, you should set the maxparallel attribute of this task to a non-zero value. The number to use highly depends on the length of your file names (the depth of your directory tree) and your operating system, so you'll have to experiment a little. POSIX recommends command line length limits of at least 4096 characters, this may give you an approximation for the number you could use as initial value for these experiments.

By default this task won't do anything unless it detects it is running on a Unix system. If you know for sure that you have a `chown` executable on your `PATH` that is command line compatible with the Unix command, you can use the task's os attribute and set its value to your current OS.

### Parameters

Attribute | Description | Required
--- | --- | ---
file | the file or directory of which the owner must be changed. | Yes, unless nested `<fileset|filelist|dirset>` elements are specified
owner | the new owner. | Yes
parallel | process all specified files using a single `chown` command. | No; defaults to true
type | One of file, dir or both. If set to file, only the owner of plain files are going to be changed. If set to dir, only the directories are considered. Note: The type attribute does not apply to nested `dirset`s—`dirset`s always implicitly assume type to be dir. | No; default is file
maxparallel | Limit the amount of parallelism by passing at most this many sourcefiles at once. Set it to negative integer for unlimited. | No; defaults to unlimited
verbose | Whether to print a summary after execution or not. | No; defaults to false
os | list of Operating Systems on which the command may be executed. | No
osfamily | OS family as used in the <os> condition. | No; defaults to unix

### Examples

Make the `start.sh` file belong to `coderjoe` on a UNIX system.

    <chown file="${dist}/start.sh" owner="coderjoe"/>

Make all `.sh` files below `${dist}/bin` belong to `coderjoe` on a UNIX system.

    <chown owner="coderjoe">
      <fileset dir="${dist}/bin" includes="**/*.sh"/>
    </chown>

Make all files below `shared/sources1` (except those below any directory named `trial`) belong to `coderjoe` on a UNIX system. In addition, all files belonging to a FileSet with id=`other.shared.sources` get the same owner.

    <chown owner="coderjoe">
      <fileset dir="shared/sources1">
        <exclude name="**/trial/**"/>
      </fileset>
      <fileset refid="other.shared.sources"/>
    </chown>

Make `cgi` scripts, files with a `.old` extension or directories beginning with `private_` belong to the user named `webadmin`. A directory ending in `.old` or a file beginning with `private_` would remain unaffected.

    <chown owner="webadmin" type="file">
      <fileset dir="/web">
        <include name="**/*.cgi"/>
        <include name="**/*.old"/>
      </fileset>
      <dirset dir="/web">
        <include name="**/private_*"/>
      </dirset>
    </chmod>