SCP

Description

since Apache Ant 1.6

Copies a file or FileSet to or from a (remote) machine running an SSH daemon. FileSet only works for copying files from the local machine to a remote machine.

Note: This task depends on external libraries not included in the Ant distribution. See Library Dependencies for more information. This task has been tested with jsch-0.1.2 and later.

See also the sshexec task

Parameters

Attribute Description Required
file The file to copy. This can be a local path or a remote path of the form user[:password]@host:/directory/path. :password can be omitted if you use key based authentication or specify the password attribute. The way remote path is recognized is whether it contains @ character or not. This will not work if your localPath contains @ character. Yes, unless a nested <fileset> element is used.
localFile This is an alternative to the file attribute. But this must always point to a local file. The reason this was added was that when you give file attribute it is treated as remote if it contains @ character. This character can exist also in local paths. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to file attribute.
remoteFile This is an alternative to the file attribute. But this must always point to a remote file. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to file attribute.
todir The directory to copy to. This can be a local path or a remote path of the form user[:password]@host:/directory/path. :password can be omitted if you use key based authentication or specify the password attribute. The way remote path is recognized is whether it contains @ character or not. This will not work if your localPath contains @ character. Yes
localTodir This is an alternative to the todir attribute. But this must always point to a local directory. The reason this was added was that when you give todir attribute it is treated as remote if it contains @ character. This character can exist also in local paths. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to todir attribute.
localTofile Changes the file name to the given name while receiving it, only useful if receiving a single file. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to todir attribute.
remoteTodir This is an alternative to the todir attribute. But this must always point to a remote directory. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to todir attribute.
remoteTofile Changes the file name to the given name while sending it, only useful if sending a single file. since Ant 1.6.2 Alternative to todir attribute.
port The port to connect to on the remote host. No, defaults to 22.
trust This trusts all unknown hosts if set to yes/true.
Note If you set this to false (the default), the host you connect to must be listed in your knownhosts file, this also implies that the file exists.		 No, defaults to No.
knownhosts This sets the known hosts file to use to validate the identity of the remote host. This must be a SSH2 format file. SSH1 format is not supported. No, defaults to ${user.home}/.ssh/known_hosts.
failonerror Whether to halt the build if the transfer fails. No; defaults to true.
password The password. Not if you are using key based authentication or the password has been given in the file or todir attribute.
keyfile Location of the file holding the private key. Yes, if you are using key based authentication.
passphrase Passphrase for your private key. No, defaults to an empty string.
verbose Determines whether SCP outputs verbosely to the user. Currently this means outputting dots/stars showing the progress of a file transfer. since Ant 1.6.2 No; defaults to false.
sftp Determines whether SCP uses the sftp protocol. The sftp protocol is the file transfer protocol of SSH2. It is recommended that this be set to true if you are copying to/from a server that doesn't support scp1. since Ant 1.7 No; defaults to false.
preserveLastModified Determines whether the last modification timestamp of downloaded files is preserved. It only works when transferring from a remote to a local system and probably doesn't work with a server that doesn't support SSH2. since Ant 1.8.0 No; defaults to false.
filemode A 3 digit octal string, specify the user, group and other modes in the standard Unix fashion. Only applies to uploaded files. Note the actual permissions of the remote file will be governed by this setting and the UMASK on the remote server. Default is 644. since Ant 1.9.5. No
dirmode A 3 digit octal string, specify the user, group and other modes in the standard Unix fashion. Only applies to uploaded dirs. Note the actual permissions of the remote dir will be governed by this setting and the UMASK on the remote server. Default is 755. since Ant 1.9.5. No
serverAliveIntervalSeconds Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the server, the task will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the server. since Ant 1.9.7 No, the default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to the server
serverAliveCountMax The number of server alive messages which may be sent without receiving any messages back from the server. Only used if serverAliveIntervalSeconds is not 0. since Ant 1.9.7 No, defaults to 3
compressed Whether to enable compression during transfer. since Ant 1.9.8 No, defaults to false

Parameters specified as nested elements

fileset or resource collections

FileSets or Resource Collections are used to select groups of files to copy. To use a fileset or a resource collection, the todir attribute must be set.

Prior to Ant 1.9.7 only <fileset> has been supported as a nested element.

Examples

Copy a single local file to a remote machine

  <scp file="myfile.txt" todir="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck"/>

Copy a single local file to a remote machine with separate password attribute

  <scp file="myfile.txt" todir="user@somehost:/home/chuck" password="password"/>

Copy a single local file to a remote machine using key base authentication.

  <scp file="myfile.txt"
       todir="user@somehost:/home/chuck" 
       keyfile="${user.home}/.ssh/id_dsa"
       passphrase="my extremely secret passphrase"
  />

Copy a single remote file to a local directory

  <scp file="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck/myfile.txt" todir="../some/other/dir"/>

Copy a remote directory to a local directory

  <scp file="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck/*" todir="/home/sara"/>

Copy a local directory to a remote directory

  <scp todir="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck/">
    <fileset dir="src_dir"/>
  </scp>

Copy a set of files to a directory

  <scp todir="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck">
    <fileset dir="src_dir">
      <include name="**/*.java"/>
    </fileset>
  </scp>

Copy a set of files to a remote directory in reverse last-modified order

  <scp todir="user:password@somehost:/home/chuck">
    <sort>
      <reverse>
        <date />
      </reverse>
      <fileset dir="src_dir">
        <include name="**/*" />
      </fileset>
    </sort>
  </scp>

Security Note: Hard coding passwords and/or usernames in scp task can be a serious security hole. Consider using variable substitution and include the password on the command line. For example: 

    <scp todir="${username}:${password}@host:/dir" ...>
Invoking ant with the following command line: 
    ant -Dusername=me -Dpassword=mypassword target1 target2
Is slightly better, but the username/password is exposed to all users on an Unix system (via the ps command). The best approach is to use the <input> task and/or retrieve the password from a (secured) .properties file.

Unix Note: File permissions are not retained when files are downloaded; they end up with the default UMASK permissions instead. This is caused by the lack of any means to query or set file permissions in the current Java runtimes. If you need a permission- preserving copy function, use <exec executable="scp" ... > instead.