Definition

Cargo provides Ant tasks to perform all the operations available from the Java API. The minimum supported version is Ant 1.9.15.


As documented in CVE-2020-1945, Apache Ant versions 1.1 to 1.9.14 and 1.10.0 to 1.10.7 use the default temporary directory identified by the Java system property java.io.tmpdir for several tasks and may thus leak sensitive information. Moreover, the fixcrlf and replaceregexp tasks copy files from the temporary directory back into the build tree allowing an attacker to inject modified source files into the Codehaus Cargo container configuration generation process, a security issue still existing in Apache Ant 1.9.15 and 1.10.8. Last but not least, Apache Ant versions up to 1.9.15 / 1.10.10 suffer from an issue where a specially crafted ZIP or TAR file can make the associated libraries allocate very large amounts of memory (and cause a JVM crash, as explained in CVE-2021-36373 and CVE-2021-36374).

We hence strongly recommend only using Apache Ant versionĀ 1.9.16 and above (if you need to stick to the Apache Ant 1.9.x branch), or Apache Ant version 1.10.11 and above in general.


The usage of Cargo for executing functional tests on a container does not mandate these Ant tasks. You could directly use the Cargo Java API from your Java unit test classes (JUnit, TestNG, etc), as described on the Functional testing page.

Explanation

Before using the Ant API you need to register the Cargo Ant tasks into Ant. This is done in the following manner:

<taskdef resource="cargo.tasks">
  <classpath>
    <pathelement location="${cargo-core-uberjar.jar}"/>
    <pathelement location="${cargo-ant.jar}"/>
  </classpath>
</taskdef>

Some additional dependencies might also be required for the Ant task. Please see the Installation page for details.

The Cargo Ant tasks in detail

Here are the different task actions available to call on this plugin:

Action

Description

start

Start a container. That task will:

Note: A container that's started with the start task will automatically shut down as soon as the parent Ant instance quits (i.e., you see a BUILD SUCCESSFUL or BUILD FAILED message). If you want to start a container and perform manual testing, see our next task run.

run

Start a container and wait for the user to press CTRL + C to stop. That task will:

stop

Stop a container.

restart

Stop and start again a container. If the container was not running before calling restart, it will simply be started.

configure

Create the configuration for a local container, without starting it. Note that the start and run actions will also install the container automatically.

daemon-start

Start a container using the Cargo Daemon.

daemon-stopStop a container using the Cargo Daemon.

deploy

Deploy a deployable to a running container.

undeploy

Undeploy a deployable from a running container.

redeploy

Undeploy and deploy again a deployable. If the deployable was not deployed before calling redeploy, it will simply be deployed.


Many wonder the difference between the start and run actions:

  • If you want to just start the container and then do other tasks (for example, execute tests), use the start action. That action should therefore ONLY be used for integration testing.
  • If you want start the container and have Ant "blocked" afterwards (i.e., until you press CTRL + C to stop), use the run action. run is therefore the action to use for manual testing.

Examples

Orion 2.x

Here's a full example showing how to deploy a WAR, and expanded WAR and an EAR in an Orion 2.x container. Please note that the output and log attribute are optional. The property elements allow you to tune how the container is configured. Here we're telling it to start on port 8180 and to generate the maximum amount of logs in the container output file.

<taskdef resource="cargo.tasks">
  <classpath>
    <pathelement location="path/to/cargo-uberjar.jar"/>
    <pathelement location="path/to/cargo-ant-tasks.jar"/>
  </classpath>
</taskdef>

<cargo containerId="orion2x" home="c:/apps/orion-2.0.3" output="target/output.log"
    log="target/cargo.log" action="start">
  <configuration>
    <property name="cargo.servlet.port" value="8180"/>
    <property name="cargo.logging" value="high"/>
    <deployable type="war" file="path/to/my/simple.war"/>
    <deployable type="war" file="path/to/my/expandedwar/simple"/>
    <deployable type="ear" file="path/to/my/simple.ear"/>
  </configuration>
</cargo>


It is also possible to load the configuration properties from a file - simply use the propertiesFile attribute of the configuration XML element.

Tomcat 5.x

This example gives a walk through of how to get a Cargo Ant build to work with Tomcat 5.x .

Prerequisites
Steps

Follow the following steps to configure your build.xml :

<property name="cargolib.dir" value="${basedir}/cargolib"/>
<property name="cargo-uberjar" value="${cargolib.dir}/cargo-core-uberjar.jar"/>
<property name="cargo-antjar" value="${cargolib.dir}/cargo-ant.jar"/>

Remote deployment

Here's a full example showing how to deploy a WAR to a remote Tomcat 6.x container.

<taskdef resource="cargo.tasks">
  <classpath>
    <pathelement location="path/to/cargo-uberjar.jar"/>
    <pathelement location="path/to/cargo-ant-tasks.jar"/>
  </classpath>
</taskdef>

<cargo containerId="tomcat6x" action="deploy" type="remote">
  <configuration type="runtime">
    <property name="cargo.hostname" value="production27"/>
    <property name="cargo.servlet.port" value="8080"/>
    <property name="cargo.remote.username" value="admin"/>
    <property name="cargo.remote.password" value=""/>
    <deployable type="war" file="path/to/simple-war.war">
      <property name="context" value="application-context"/>
    </deployable>
  </configuration>
</cargo>

For more details, please check the example in the Remote Container section for the Ant tasks. The Ant tasks support the deployer actions deploy, undeploy and redeploy.