Description thierry lach 2003-07-29 14:28:46 EDT

The "Source" tab under "Java Build Path" in the project properties provides for 
exclude filters.  Allowing an "include filter", or allowing the filter to be 
defined as either exclude or include, would be useful.

Explanation.

I've got an existing open-source web project that I'm trying to set up under 
Eclipse.  It uses Ant as the build tool.  I use Sysdeo's tomcat plugin to 
control a tomcat instance, and most of the time don't have problems.  But the 
project uses Ant to build up WEB-INF directories from a number of source 
directories - specifically it copies property files into WEB-INF/classes from a 
directory which is not part of their source structure, and a single 
configuration file into WEB-INF/classes from a configuration directory 
containing a couple of dozen other files.

The problem comes when Eclipse decides to rebuild the project (or I ask it 
to).  The first think Eclipse does is to clean the output folder.  Then it 
compiles the sources and copies the files from the source folders into the 
output folder.  But it wasn't copying the properties or configuration files - 
which was causing me very intermittent problems until I realized what was going 
on.

I can emulate the behavior of the Ant build file with additional source folders 
and exclude filters - but especially in the case of the configuration file it 
would be very convenient to be able to specify only the file or files I want to 
copy rather than having to exclude every other file.

It would also be convenient if the filter were available using a regexp, to be 
able to include *.properties, for example.