Filesets and patternsets are essential components in Apache Ant for specifying groups of files and patterns, respectively. Filesets define a collection of files or directories to be processed, while patternsets determine the inclusion or exclusion of specific file patterns within those collections.
Use filesets when you need to perform operations on a group of files or directories, such as copying, moving, or deleting them. Patternsets come into play when you want to filter the files within a fileset based on their names or extensions.
For advanced file selections, combine filesets and patternsets by nesting patternsets inside filesets. This allows you to include or exclude files matching certain patterns from the overall fileset, providing granular control over the selected files.
Example:
<include name="**/*.java"/>
<exclude name="**/*Test.java"/>
In this example, all Java source files are included except those with “Test” in their names, effectively excluding test classes from the selection.
