Ant, download fileset from remote machine

Question

As I've readen ant doesn't provide 'fileset' attribute when downloading files from remote machine via scp task. It works when sending files from local machine, but It doesn't work when starting in remote machine. That's from documentation. So in remote machine I have some folders and load of files in every directory. I want to download all folders and one specified file from every of them. Downloading all files and then deleting unneeded files won't be solution beacuse there are thousands of files.

So. How to download all folders (only create the on disk without content) from specified directory in remote machine and then download one specified file from every directory in remote machine and put it to corresponding folder using ant?

Answer 1

Since you haven't specified I'll assume that your local and remote systems are unix based and therefore support rsync and ssh.

A more cross-platform solution is challenging...

Example

Configure SSH

Generate an SSH key (specify an empty passphrase):

ssh-keygen -f rsync

This will generate 2 files, corresponding to the private and public keys:

|-- rsync
`-- rsync.pub

Install the public key on the remote server

ssh-copy-id -i rsync.pub user@remote

Test that you can now perform a password-less login, using the ssh private key to authenticate:

ssh -i rsync user@remote

ANT

The "download" target invokes rsync to copy the remote file system tree locally. If required one can additionally specify rsync exclusions (see the rsync doco).

<project name="rsync" default="download">

    <target name="download">
        <exec executable="rsync">
            <arg line="-avz -e 'ssh -i rsync' user@remote:/path/to/data/ data"/>
        </exec>
    </target>

    <target name="clean">
        <delete dir="data"/>
    </target>

</project>