Sign jars works in IDE, not from Ant command line?

[GrantB]

This is driving me up the wall.

When I build my Web Start app in NetBeans, the jars get signed (self-signed, I suppose). I see the build output signing 6 or 7 jars and everything works smoothly after deployment.

However, when I do it from the command line with ant, the signing step is skipped and my deployment fails (the app can't access the system properties as programmed and throws out of execution).

As best as I can tell, NetBeans is using "ant clean jar", and that's the command I'm calling.

I've also tried ant targets "jnlp" and "jnlp-init-generate-master" which precede the signing in the NB build output, but again, the signing step is skipped.

So what the expletive is NetBeans doing that it's hiding from Ant? How can I access this hidden magic for my command-line script?

(I'm using NB 6.7)

[GrantB]

I've made a little headway. I've found this in my buildlog:

[GrantB]

Still stumped. I did end up finding a version of the jar in an old Netbeans 6.1 install. I copied it to my ant lib dir, and the "jar" build target still gives me the same error message.

I confirmed with "ant -diagnostics" that ant can see the lib.

I'd greatly appreciate any help that anyone can give.

[GrantB]

One more comment: I did install NB 6.8. Still no difference.

[MadHatter]

Hey there sir,

What a coincidence that we're having the same problem!

I can duplicate the problem you see on a machine that doesn't have netbeans. But using the same scripts on a machine with netbeans shows no issue. The question is what's the missing dependency.

So here's some links I found for a manual solution:
These two links are the closest I can find to a solution. Each does a similar manual work around:
* http://www.pikopong.com/blog/2008/04/14/automatically-sign-jars-using-ant-and-bash/
* http://www.arminsadeghi.com/signing_jars

However, I just want to find the missing dependency and hopefully do it the easy way. So down the rabbit hole we go...

I too have old versions of NetBeans and I only have the requested jar in the following location:
./Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/java2/ant/nblib/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart-signtask.jar
./Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/java2/modules/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart-signtask.jar

Which made me think that maybe the error is an artifact of a project created in an earlier version of netbeans which was upgraded. So I then created a simple webstart app in NetBeans 6.7.1. And for good measure I deleted the old versions of NetBeans. Still the error occurred, but this time the message was a bit improved:

-unavailable-signjars-task:
[echo] Task required to sign JAR file is missing, probably the library 'JWS Ant Tasks' is missing either from shared folder or from IDE installation. JAR files will not be signed.

Looking through the build files for where this error occurs, I found the following:
<target name="-test-signjars-task-available">
<available property="signjars.task.available"
classname="org.netbeans.modules.javawebstart.anttasks.SignJarsTask"
classpath="${libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath}"/>
</target>

Of course I couldn't find where JWSAntTasks.classpath was coming from, that would be too easy... So I figured it might be stored in the NetBeans application somewhere.

The following search showed me that I may have found where the target is defined:
Machine:NetBeans 6.7.1.app dude$ cd /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.7.1.app
Machine:NetBeans 6.7.1.app dude$ grep -H -r JWSAntTasks *
Binary file Contents/Resources/NetBeans/java2/modules/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart.jar matches

The next step seemed to be to somehow get ant to load the jar:
/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.7.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/java2/modules/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart.jar

So I accomplished that with the following line in build-impl.xml:
<target name="-pre-init">
<!-- Empty placeholder for easier customization. -->
<!-- You can override this target in the ../build.xml file. -->
<property name="libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath" value="../lib/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart.jar" />
</target>

And I know that part is working because I put the following inside the target that generates the error message:
<echo message="libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath=${libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath}"/>

So the build output now contains:
-test-signjars-task-available:
[echo] libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath=../lib/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart.jar

-unavailable-signjars-task:
[echo] Task required to sign JAR file is missing, probably the library 'JWS Ant Tasks' is missing either from shared folder or from IDE installation. JAR files will not be signed.

The second error here is a result of the following:
<target name="-unavailable-signjars-task" depends="-test-signjars-task-available" unless="signjars.task.available">
<echo message="Task required to sign JAR file is missing, probably the library 'JWS Ant Tasks' is missing either from shared folder or from IDE installation. JAR files will not be signed."/>
</target>

So apparently signjars.task.available is false. So I did a "jar xvf <filename>" on the jar to see what was inside. I found the following which seems to be a relative path of some kind.
<resource>jar:nbinst://org.netbeans.modules.javawebstart/ant/extra/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart-anttasks.jar!/</resource>

This link talks about the relative path but seems to somehow not actually say anything:
http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqUriVsUrl
Well done I must say. But some more searching suggests that it's a file path of some kind.

Machine:NetBeans dude$ cd /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.7.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/

Machine:NetBeans dude$ find . -type f -name *.jar | grep ant | grep web
./java2/ant/extra/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart-anttasks.jar AHA!!!!!
./java2/ant/lib/ant-weblogic.jar
./java2/ant/nblib/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart.jar

So I copy that jar out of the application to somewhere more portable and update the property:
<property name="libs.JWSAntTasks.classpath" value="../lib/org-netbeans-modules-javawebstart-anttasks.jar" />

So the build now displays:

sign-jars:
[signjar] Signing JAR: /root/ccxme-build/TestWebstart/dist/TestWebstart.jar to /root/ccxme-build/TestWebstart/dist/TestWebstart.jar as nb-jws

Voila!

“ I relieve and release your hurt that you may be set free. ”

-Jason Aubrey