Copies a file, a directory, or set of files to a new file or directory.

Files are only copied if the source file is newer than the destination file, or if the destination file does not exist. However, you can explicitly overwrite files with the NAnt.Core.Tasks.CopyTask.Overwrite attribute.

When a NAnt.Core.Types.FileSet is used to select files to copy, the NAnt.Core.Tasks.CopyTask.ToDirectory attribute must be set. Files that are located under the base directory of the NAnt.Core.Types.FileSet will be copied to a directory under the destination directory matching the path relative to the base directory of the NAnt.Core.Types.FileSet, unless the NAnt.Core.Tasks.CopyTask.Flatten attribute is set to true.

Files that are not located under the the base directory of the NAnt.Core.Types.FileSet will be copied directly under to the destination directory, regardless of the value of the NAnt.Core.Tasks.CopyTask.Flatten attribute.

Encoding

Unless an encoding is specified, the encoding associated with the system's current ANSI code page is used.

An UTF-8, little-endian Unicode, and big-endian Unicode encoded text file is automatically recognized, if the file starts with the appropriate byte order marks.

If you employ filters in your copy operation, you should limit the copy to text files. Binary files will be corrupted by the copy operation.

Parameters

Attribute	Type	Description	Required
flatten	bool	Ignore directory structure of source directory, copy all files into a single directory, specified by the `NAnt.Core.Tasks.CopyTask.ToDirectory` attribute. The default is `false`.	False
includeemptydirs	bool	Copy any empty directories included in the `NAnt.Core.Types.FileSet`. The default is `true`.	False
inputencoding		The encoding to use when reading files. The default is the system's current ANSI code page.	False
outputencoding		The encoding to use when writing the files. The default is the encoding of the input file.	False
overwrite	bool	Overwrite existing files even if the destination files are newer. The default is `false`.	False
file	file	The file to copy.	False
todir	directory	The directory to copy to.	False
tofile	file	The file to copy to.	False
failonerror	bool	Determines if task failure stops the build, or is just reported. The default is `true`.	False
if	bool	If `true` then the task will be executed; otherwise, skipped. The default is `true`.	False
unless	bool	Opposite of `NAnt.Core.Task.IfDefined`. If `false` then the task will be executed; otherwise, skipped. The default is `false`.	False
verbose	bool	Determines whether the task should report detailed build log messages. The default is `false`.	False

Examples

Copy a single file while changing its encoding from "latin1" to "utf-8".

<copy 
file="myfile.txt"
tofile="mycopy.txt"
inputencoding="latin1"
outputencoding="utf-8" />

Copy a set of files to a new directory.

    <copy todir="${build.dir}">
    <fileset basedir="bin">
        <include name="*.dll" />
    </fileset>
</copy>

Copy a set of files to a directory, replacing @TITLE@ with "Foo Bar" in all files.

    <copy todir="../backup/dir">
    <fileset basedir="src_dir">
        <include name="**/*" />
    </fileset>
    <filterchain>
        <replacetokens>
            <token key="TITLE" value="Foo Bar" />
        </replacetokens>
    </filterchain>
</copy>

Copy an entire directory and its contents.

    <copy tofile="target/dir">
  <fileset basedir="source/dir"/>
</copy>

Requirements

Assembly: NAnt.Core.dll
Namespace: NAnt.Core.Tasks

<copy>

Encoding

Parameters

Nested elements

<fileset>

</fileset>

<filterchain>

</filterchain>

Examples

Requirements