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<h2><a name="apply">Apply/<i>ExecOn</i></a></h2>
<p><i>The name <code>execon</code> is deprecated and only kept for backwards
compatibility.</i></p>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>Executes a system command. When the <i>os</i> attribute is specified, then
the command is only executed when Ant is run on one of the specified operating
systems.</p>
<p>The files and/or directories of a number of <a
href="../CoreTypes/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s, <a
href="../CoreTypes/dirset.html">DirSet</a>s (<em>since Ant 1.6</em>)
or <a href="../CoreTypes/filelist.html">FileList</a>s (<em>since Ant
1.6</em>) are passed as arguments to the system command.</p>
<p>If you specify a nested <a
href="../CoreTypes/mapper.html">mapper</a> and the <i>dest</i> attribute,
the timestamp of each source file is compared to the timestamp of a
target file which is defined by the nested mapper element and searched
for in the given dest.</p>
<p>At least one fileset or filelist is required, and you must not specify more than
one mapper.</p>
<p>Note that you cannot interact with the forked program, the only way
to send input to it is via the input and inputstring attributes.</p>
<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
<td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
<td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">executable</td>
<td valign="top">the command to execute without any command line
arguments.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">dest</td>
<td valign="top">the directory where the <apply> expects the target files will be placed by the
command, when it is executed.
</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">Yes, if you specify a nested mapper</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">spawn</td>
<td valign="top">whether or not you want the commands to be spawned<br/>
Default is false.<br>
If you spawn a command, its output will not be logged by ant.<br/>
The input, output, error, and result property settings are not active when spawning a process.<br>
<em>since Ant 1.6</em>
</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">dir</td>
<td valign="top">the directory in which the command should be executed.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">relative</td>
<td valign="top">whether the filenames should be passed on the
command line as absolute or relative pathnames (relative to the
base directory of the corresponding fileset/list for source files or
the <i>dest</i> attribute for target files).</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>false</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">forwardslash</td>
<td valign="top">whether the file names should be passed
with forward slashes even if the operating system requires other
file separator. The option is ignored if the system file separator
is a forward slash.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>false</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">os</td>
<td valign="top">list of Operating Systems on which the command may be
executed.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">output</td>
<td valign="top">the file to which the output of the command
should be redirected. If the error stream is not also redirected
to a file or property, it will appear in this output.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">error</td>
<td valign="top">The file to which the standard error of the
command should be redirected. <em>since Ant 1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">logError</td>
<td valign="top">This attribute is used when you wish to see error
output in Ant's log and you are redirecting output to a
file/property. The error output will not be included in the output
file/property. If you redirect error with the "error" or
"errorProperty" attributes, this will have no effect.
<em>since Ant 1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">append</td>
<td valign="top">whether output should be appended to or overwrite
an existing file. Defaults to false. If you set parallel to
false, you will probably want to set this one to true.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">outputproperty</td>
<td valign="top">the name of a property in which the output of the
command should be stored. Unless the error stream is redirected
to a separate file or stream, this property will include the error
output.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">errorproperty</td>
<td valign="top">The name of a property in which the standard error of the
command should be stored. <em>since Ant 1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">input</td>
<td valign="top">A file from which the executed command's standard
input is taken. This attribute is mutually exclusive with the
inputstring attribute. <em>since Ant 1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">inputstring</td>
<td valign="top">A string which serves as the input stream for the
executed command. This attribute is mutually exclusive with the
input attribute. <em>since Ant 1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">resultproperty</td>
<td valign="top">the name of a property in which the return code
of the command should be stored. Only of interest if
failonerror=false. If you set parallel to false, only the result
of the first execution will be stored.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">timeout</td>
<td valign="top">Stop the command if it doesn't finish within the
specified time (given in milliseconds).</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">failonerror</td>
<td valign="top">Stop the buildprocess if the command exits with a
returncode other than 0.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">failifexecutionfails</td>
<td valign="top">Stop the build if we can't start the program.
Defaults to true. </td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">skipemptyfilesets</td>
<td valign="top">Don't run the command, if no source files have
been found or are newer than their corresponding target
files. Despite its name, this attribute applies to filelists as
well.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>false</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">parallel</td>
<td valign="top">Run the command only once, appending all files as
arguments. If false, command will be executed once for every file.
Defaults to false. </td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">type</td>
<td valign="top">One of <i>file</i>, <i>dir</i> or
<i>both</i>. If set to <i>file</i>, only the names of plain
files will be sent to the command. If set to <i>dir</i>, only
the names of directories are considered.<br>
<strong>Note:</strong> The type attribute does not apply to
nested <i>dirset</i>s - <i>dirset</i>s always implicitly
assume type to be <i>dir</i>.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>file</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">newenvironment</td>
<td valign="top">Do not propagate old environment when new environment
variables are specified.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>false</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">vmlauncher</td>
<td valign="top">Run command using the Java VM's execution facilities
where available. If set to false the underlying OS's shell,
either directly or through the antRun scripts, will be used.
Under some operating systems, this gives access to facilities
not normally available through the VM including, under Windows,
being able to execute scripts, rather than their associated
interpreter. If you want to specify the name of the
executable as a relative path to the directory given by the
dir attribute, it may become necessary to set vmlauncher to
false as well.</td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>true</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">resolveExecutable</td>
<td valign="top">When this attribute is true, the name of the
executable if resolved firstly against the project basedir and if
that does not exist, against the execution directory if
specified. On Unix systems, if you only want to allow execution of
commands in the user's path, set this to false. <em>since Ant
1.6</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No, default is <i>false</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">maxparallel</td>
<td valign="top">Limit the amount of parallelism by passing at
most this many sourcefiles at once. Set it to <= 0 for
unlimited. Defaults to unlimited. <em>Since Ant 1.6.</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">addsourcefile</td>
<td valign="top">Whether source file names should be added to the
command automatically. Defaults to <code>true</code>.
<em>Since Ant 1.6.</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">verbose</td>
<td valign="top">Whether to print a summary after execution or not.
Defaults to <code>false</code>. <em>Since Ant 1.6.</em></td>
<td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>Parameters specified as nested elements</h3>
<h4>fileset</h4>
<p>You can use any number of nested <code><fileset></code>
elements to define the files for this task and refer to
<code><fileset></code>s defined elsewhere.</p>
<h4>filelist</h4>
<p><em>Since Ant 1.6</em></p>
<p>You can use any number of nested <code><filelist></code>
elements to define the files for this task and refer to
<code><filelist></code>s defined elsewhere.</p>
<h4>dirset</h4>
<p><em>Since Ant 1.6</em></p>
<p>You can use any number of nested <code><dirset></code>
elements to define the directories for this task and refer to
<code><dirset></code>s defined elsewhere.</p>
<h4>mapper</h4>
<p>A single <code><mapper></code> specifies the target files
relative to the <CODE>dest</CODE> attribute for dependency checking.
At least one <code><fileset></code> or
<code><filelist></code> is required.</p>
<h4>arg</h4>
<p>Command line arguments should be specified as nested
<code><arg></code> elements. See <a
href="../using.html#arg">Command line arguments</a>.</p>
<h4>srcfile</h4>
<p>By default the file names of the source files will be added to the
end of the command line (unless you set addsourcefile to
<code>false</code>). If you need to place it somewhere different,
use a nested <code><srcfile></code> element between your
<code><arg></code> elements to mark the insertion point.</p>
<h4>targetfile</h4>
<p><code><targetfile></code> is similar to
<code><srcfile></code> and marks the position of the target
filename on the command line. If omitted, the target filenames will
not be added to the command line at all. This element can only be
specified, if you also define a nested mapper and the <i>dest</i>
attribute.</p>
<h4>env</h4>
<p>It is possible to specify environment variables to pass to the
system command via nested <code><env></code> elements. See the
description in the section about <a href="exec.html#env">exec</a></p>
<h4>redirector</h4>
<i><b>Since Ant 1.6.2</b></i>
<p>A nested <a href="../CoreTypes/redirector.html">I/O Redirector</a>
can be specified. <apply>'s behavior is like that of
<a href="exec.html#redirector">exec</a> with regard to
redirectors, with the exception that, in non-<i>parallel</i> mode,
file mapping will take place with each iteration. This grants the
user the capacity to receive input from, and send output to, different
files for each sourcefile.
</p>
<h3>Examples</h3>
<blockquote><pre>
<apply executable="ls">
<arg value="-l"/>
<fileset dir="/tmp">
<patternset>
<exclude name="**/*.txt"/>
</patternset>
</fileset>
<fileset refid="other.files"/>
</apply>
</pre></blockquote>
<p>invokes <code>ls -l</code>, adding the absolute filenames of all
files below <code>/tmp</code> not ending in <code>.txt</code> and all
files of the FileSet with <code>id</code> <code>other.files</code> to
the command line.</p>
<blockquote><pre>
<apply executable="somecommand" parallel="false">
<arg value="arg1"/>
<srcfile/>
<arg value="arg2"/>
<fileset dir="/tmp"/>
</apply>
</pre></blockquote>
<p>invokes <code>somecommand arg1 SOURCEFILENAME arg2</code> for each
file in <code>/tmp</code> replacing SOURCEFILENAME with the absolute
filename of each file in turn. If <code>parallel</code> had been set
to true, SOURCEFILENAME would be replaced with the absolute filenames
of all files separated by spaces.</p>
<blockquote><pre>
<apply executable="cc" dest="src/C" parallel="false">
<arg value="-c"/>
<arg value="-o"/>
<targetfile/>
<srcfile/>
<fileset dir="src/C" includes="*.c"/>
<mapper type="glob" from="*.c" to="*.o"/>
</apply>
</pre></blockquote>
<p>invokes <code>cc -c -o TARGETFILE SOURCEFILE</code> for each
<code>.c</code> file that is newer than the corresponding
<code>.o</code>, replacing TARGETFILE with the absolute filename of
the <code>.o</code> and SOURCEFILE with the absolute name of the
<code>.c</code> file.</p>
<blockquote><pre>
<mapper id="out" type="glob"
from="src${file.separator}*.file"
to="dest${file.separator}*.out" />
<apply executable="processfile" dest="dest">
<fileset dir="src" includes="*.file"/>
<mapper refid="out" />
<redirector>
<outputmapper refid="out" />
</redirector>
</apply>
</pre></blockquote>
Applies the fictitious "processfile" executable to all
files matching <code>*.file</code> in the <CODE>src</CODE> directory.
The <CODE>out</CODE> <mapper> has been set up to map
<CODE>*.file</CODE> to <CODE>*.out</CODE>, then this <mapper>
is used to specify <CODE>targetfile</CODE>s for this <apply>
task. A reference to <CODE>out</CODE> is then used as an
<outputmapper> nested in a <redirector>, which in turn is
nested beneath this <apply> instance. This allows us to perform
dependency checking against output files--the target files in this case.
<hr><p align="center">Copyright © 2000-2004 The Apache Software Foundation. All rights
Reserved.</p>
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