In nant, how to delete contents of a directory, but not the directory itself?

Question

Suppose I were scripting a deployment using nant on a Windows server to a file share: \\server\share. I want a nant script to delete all files from the share then copy in new files.

I have this code to delete the files, but I'm getting an error that it can't delete "\server\share". But I didn't want to delete the share, just the contents in it.

<delete>
   <fileset basedir="\\server\share">
      <include name="**/**" />
   </fileset>
</delete>

Output:

BUILD FAILED

D:\code\xxx\xxx.deploy(177,8):
Cannot delete directory '\\server\share'.
    Access to the path '\\server\share' is denied.

If I modified it to instead delete contents of a directory in the share, say \\server\share\somedir, it'll delete "somedir" without error. But still, I didn't want to delete the dir, just the contents. Is there a way?

Answer 1

This works for me - no workarounds required:

<delete>
    <fileset basedir="\\server\share">
        <include name="**\*" />
    </fileset>
</delete>