Apache™ > Apache Ant™ > Apache Ivy™ > Documentation (2.2.0) > Reference > Ant Tasks > retrieve

retrieve

The retrieve task copies resolved dependencies anywhere you want in your file system.

This is a post resolve task, with all the behaviour and attributes common to all post resolve tasks.

since 1.4 This task can even be used to synchronize the destination directory with what should actually be in according to the dependency resolution. This means that by setting sync="true", Ivy will not only copy the necessary files, but it will also remove the files which do not need to be there.

The synchronisation actually consists in deleting all filles and directories in the root destination directory which are not required by the retrieve.

The root destination directory is the the directory denoted by the first level up the first token in the destination pattern.
Example:
pattern: lib/[conf]/[artifact].[ext]
root: lib

Attribute	Description	Required
pattern	the pattern to use to copy the dependencies	No. Defaults to ${ivy.retrieve.pattern}
ivypattern	the pattern to use to copy the ivy files of dependencies since 1.3	No. Dependencies ivy files are not retrieved by default.
conf	a comma separated list of the configurations to retrieve	No. Defaults to the configurations resolved by the last resolve call, or * if no resolve was explicitly called
sync	true to synchronize the destination, false to just make a copy since 1.4	No. Defaults to false
type	comma separated list of accepted artifact types since 1.4	No. All artifact types are accepted by default.
overwriteMode	option to configure when the destination file should be overwritten if it exist (since 2.2.0). Possible values are: newer (default) overwrite the destination file if a more recent one is available (based on timestamp) different overwrite the destination file if the timestamp is different always always overwrite the destination file never never overwrite the destination file	No. Defaults to 'newer'.
symlink	true to create symbolic links, false to copy the artifacts. The destination of the symbolic links depends on the value of the useOrigin attribute (since 2.0)	No. Defaults to false
settingsRef	A reference to the ivy settings that must be used by this task (since 2.0)	No, 'ivy.instance' is taken by default.
log	the log setting to use during the resolve and retrieve process. (since 2.0) Available options are the same as for resolve when used to trigger resolve automatically (see postresolvetask), or the following for the retrieve process only: default the default log settings, where all usual messages are output to the console quiet disable all usual messages, making the whole retrieve process quiet unless errors occur	No, defaults to 'default'.

Examples

<ivy:retrieve />

Retrieves dependencies using default parameters. This usually retrieves all the dependencies of the last resolve call to a lib directory.

---

<ivy:retrieve pattern="${lib.dir}/[conf]/[artifact].[ext]"/>

Retrieves all dependencies of the last resolve call to a lib directory, dependencies being separated in directories named by configuration, each conf directory containing corresponding artifacts without the revision.
For instance, if the ivy file declares two configurations default and test, the resulting lib dir could look like this:

lib
  default
    commons-lang.jar
    commons-logging.jar
  test
    junit.jar

Note that if a dependency is required in the two configurations, it will be copied in the two directories. The download of the dependency is however only made once at resolve time.

---

<ivy:retrieve pattern="${lib.dir}/[conf]/[artifact].[ext]" sync="true" />

Same as before, but with synchronisation enabled.

For instance, if the ivy file declares two configurations default and test, the resulting lib dir could look like this:

lib
  default
    commons-lang.jar
    commons-logging.jar
  test
    junit.jar

And now suppose commons-logging is no longer part of the dependencies of the default configuration, then a new call to retrieve will result in:

lib
  default
    commons-lang.jar
  test
    junit.jar

With no synchronisation, commons-logging would not have been removed by the call.

---

<ivy:retrieve pattern="${lib.dir}/[type]/[artifact]-[revision].[ext]" conf="runtime"/>

Retrieves only the dependencies of the

runtime

configuration in directories named by artifact type. The resulting lib dir could look like this:

lib
  jar
    commons-lang-1.0.jar
    looks-1.1.jar
  source
    looks-1.1.zip

---

<ivy:retrieve organisation="foo" module="bar" inline="true" pattern="${my.install.dir}/[artifact].[ext]"/>

Resolves and retrieve the latest version of the module bar and its dependencies in the directory pointed by ${my.install.dir}.