So you are hypothetically deploying your ant-built tar’d up software release. Let’s further say for the sake of argument that it contains some business-critical scripts that must keep their executable mode to be run from cron. Oops, those files are no longer executable! You will soon be disappointed at the failure of your cron job to do anything at all, and you may experience some increased email volume accompanied by mild irritation.  If this condition persists, call your doctor, or go back and RTFM again because as the docs imply, this shortcoming can be easily overcome.

Your job is to identify all the files that need to keep their mode, username, or groupname, and specify said property in a special fileset called tarfileset.  In my ant build, let’s say the build root is ${builddir} and contains 2 components called src and lib.  I’ve got one specific file src/foo/exec.sh, and a whole tree of stuff at lib/bar, that have to be executable.  I will need to call the Tar task with two tarfilesets: one to include the executables and set their mode, and a second to include everything else while excluding the executables.

Before:

<tar destfile="${buildfile.name}"
     basedir="${builddir}"
     longfile="gnu"
     includes="src/**, lib/**"/>

After:

<tar destfile="${buildfile.name}" longfile="gnu">
     <tarfileset dir="${builddir}" filemode="755">
         <include name="src/foo/exec.sh"/>
         <include name="lib/bar/**"/>
     </tarfileset>
     <tarfileset dir="${builddir}">
         <include name="src/**"/>
         <include name="lib/**"/>
         <exclude name="src/foo/exec.sh"/>
         <exclude name="lib/bar/**"/>
     </tarfileset>
</tar>

Works for me!