Download older version of Swing app using JWS

Question

Hi
In my project, I have a Swing GUI which is launched using Java Web Start.
I have to sometimes move the Swing app to a previous version i.e. I deploy a previous version of the WAR file (which has on old timestamp). But, since JWS looks for only the latest version of the Jar file, it doesn't download that Jar file.
I looked in jnlp specification and found that cache management is done by two ways:
1) When there is no version, timestamp is used. (as in my case)
2) When a version is specified, then a new version is downloaded using URL/version-id pair.
So, is there some other way I can force the app to be downloaded every time the timestamp changes on the server (whether old or new).
Or, is there a way to include the information URL/version-id in my WAR file and force the old version to be downloaded.
The JWS version is: 1.4.2_11.
Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

You might 'touch' the old jar to give it a newer timestamp.
There are a variety of tools that will do this, (including most server 'control panels'), but here is a link to the Ant based 'Touch' task.
<http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/touch.html>
So, the process might be to get the old WAR, then use the Ant tasks:
- Unzip - to extract the components
- Touch - to put a new timestamp on the old jar file
- War - to create the 'new' war, with updated timestamp
- FTP (optional ant task) - to upload the lot.
Combine those 4 tasks, and it could make for a relatively simple and painless build file for a generic fix.