PM75639: Using projectImport creates a dummy project for projects that do not exist

Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software 8.5.1
Rational Application Developer Standard Edition, Version 8.0.4.2

APAR status

• Closed as program error.

Error description

• Abstract:
  
  Attempts to execute the Ant task projectImport result in the
  creation of a dummy project if the project to be imported cannot
  be found, when using IBM Rational Application Developer
  
  Problem:
  
  Using Rational Application Developer, follow these steps:
  
  1. Start on an empty Workspace
  
  2. Create an Ant Build file with the following contents:
  
  ??xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'??
  
  ?project name='project' default='default'?
  
      ?target name='default' ?
         ?projectImport projectname='TestProject'
  failonerror='TRUE'/? ?/target?
  
  ?/project?
  
  3. Run the build file in the same JRE as the Workspace
  
  Expected result:
  
  You expect an error since the project to be imported does not
  exist.
  
  
  Observed Result:
  
  
  Rational Application Developer created a new empty project
  called TestProject, with the following .project file:
  
  ??xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'??
  
  ?projectDescription?
  
   ?name?TestProject?/name?
  
   ?comment??/comment?
  
   ?projects?
  
   ?/projects?
  
   ?buildSpec?
  
   ?/buildSpec?
  
   ?natures?
  
   ?/natures?
  
  ?/projectDescription?
  
  Local fix:
  
  There is no known workaround at this time.
  

Local fix

Problem summary

• ****************************************************************
  * USERS AFFECTED:                                              *
  ****************************************************************
  * PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:                                         *
  ****************************************************************
  * RECOMMENDATION:                                              *
  ****************************************************************
  projectImport Ant task will create dummy project when a
  project is specified via the projectLocation attribute and
  it does not exist on the file system.
  
  The result will be to obtain empty projects with ".project"
  file contents looking like the following:
  ??xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"??
  ?projectDescription?
  ?????name?SimpleCalculatorNot?/name?
  ?????comment??/comment?
  ?????projects?
  ?????/projects?
  ?????buildSpec?
  ?????/buildSpec?
  ?????natures?
  ?????/natures?
  ?/projectDescription?
  

Problem conclusion

• A new boolean preference "createUnknownProjects" (default
  value: false) was introduced to set whether dummy projects
  should be created or not. If the preference is set to false
  through the workspacePreferenceSet Ant task, the dummy
  projects will not be created and a corresponding warning
  message will be printed to the user.
  
  The fix for this APAR is included in Rational Application
  Developer v8.0.4.2.
  

Temporary fix

Comments

APAR Information

• APAR is sysrouted FROM one or more of the following:

• APAR is sysrouted TO one or more of the following:

Fix information

• Fixed component name

  RATL APP DEV WI

• Fixed component ID

  5724J1901

Applicable component levels

• R804 PSN

     UP