Chapter 1: Introducing Ant

Another Neat Tool (Ant) is a Java-based build tool that allows you to automate the build process of software. The build process compiles, links, and archives the files required to build software for use and distribution. Ant provides an extensible architecture that allows you add a new Java class to Ant to extend its functioning. The platform-independence property of Java allows you to use Ant on any computer that supports the Java run time.

This chapter introduces Ant. It explains how to set up an environment to install, configure, and build Ant. It also describes how to work with the Ant buildfile and run Ant.

Overview of Ant

Apache Ant is an open-source, cross-platform build tool from Apache Software Foundation, which is available in binary and source forms. Ant is an XML -based build tool, built in Java. The XML feature allows the buildfiles of Ant to be more descriptive and the Java feature allows Ant to be platform independent.

Ant is a command-line driven program that uses an XML file to describe the build process and store the build information. The XML file specifies rules, actions, and targets for the building process of the application. This XML file is named build.xml, by default, if you do not specify a file name for the buildfile in the current directory. The buildfile contains various tasks that Ant executes. The buildfile uses certain built-in commands of Ant to perform specific operations, such as copying and removing a directory and packaging a set of files.

Note

The make tool is a C and C++ based build tool that helps automate the build process of the application. The parameter of the make tool is makefile.

Table 1-1 lists the built-in commands of Ant:

Table 1-1: Built-in Commands of Ant
Command	Description
ant	Executes another Ant process from within the existing process.
copydir	Copies a directory.
copyfile	Copies a file.
concurrent versions system (cvs)	Provides the ability to track and potentially revert incremental changes to files, reporting the changes to a mailing list as they occur.
delete	Removes either one file or all files from a specified directory and its subdirectories.
deltree	Removes a directory and all the files and subdirectories that it contains.
exec	Executes a system command.
get	Retrieves a file from a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
jar	Packages a set of files.
java	Executes a Java class within the running Ant Virtual Machine (VM) or forks another VM if the fork attribute is set to true.
javac	Compiles a source tree within the running Ant VM. Forks another VM if the fork attribute is set to true.
javadoc/Javadoc2	Produces code documentation using the javadoc tool.
property	Provides the default value of the property attribute to build the application. In buildfiles, you retrieve or set the values of property names from the property files using the <property> tag in the buildfile.
rmic	Executes the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) compiler for a specific class file.
tstamp	Sets the DSTAMP, TSTAMP, and TODAY properties in the current project.
style	Processes a set of documents using Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT).

Benefits of Ant

Ant allows you to build your own code and add new functions to the code by adding a new Java class. The various benefits of Ant are:

Allows you to build large-scale, multi-teamed projects.
Allows you to develop Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications.
Allows you to build Java Archive (JAR) files.
Allows remote work, such as remote building, using JAR files.
Allows you to build open-source projects.
Extracts the source from a version control system.
Builds directories.
Removes directories.
Compiles code.
Produces javadoc.
Builds JAR files.
Copies files.
Generates e-mail.
Executes SQL commands.
Performs unit tests.