I need to merge the contents of src/main/webapp with resources from a third party vendor (GXT). So far I have only got this working using the "ant.delete" method. I think I might be doing something wrong but maybe the manual could be clearer on how to do this. I specifically don't want to hook into the "normal" clean task which deletes the entire "build" directory.

The commented section below doesn't throw any exception but the directory (build/war) is not cleared.

webAppDirName = "$buildDir/war" 

task mergeWar << {
  description = 'Merge GXT resources with war source'
  
  ant.delete(dir: webAppDirName)
/*  
  clean {
    println "Cleaning $webAppDirName"
  	dir = file(webAppDirName)
  }
*/  
  
  copy {
    from 'src/main/webapp'
    into webAppDirName
  }
  ...
}