When archiving, is it possible for gradle to ignore some files?

Old Forum
1

I understand one could use “exclude” to exclude certain files in a folder from being archived. If it’s big project, it’s painful to explicitly list all files not being used any more. The scenario I am wondering if if I have some left-over files from previous build which I don’t need, is there a way for gradle to realize these files are not being generated by the current build and ignore them? Or do I need to a “clean” to make sure these files are deleted at the first place?

2

I don’t understand what you mean by “archiving”, but whether a task deletes previously generated files depends on the implementation of that task. For example, the ‘JavaCompile’ task does take care of this, to prevent stale class files.

3

Thanks for your quick reply. By archiving, I mean simply create a jar file or zip file. Would there be any way to track the files in the ‘from’ folder and ignore the ones from previous build. I guess I would like to mimic what JavaCompile is doing with class files.

4

You probably want to use the ‘Sync’ task instead of ‘Copy’.