Introduction to ANT

Apache Ant is a powerful way to convert your developmental structures to deployment structures. It is declarative and all the command line tasks used for deploying an application are represented by simple XML elements.

A Java-based build tool.

Ant is a free tool under GNU License and is freely available at ANT Site, current version of ant is 1.7.1.

Ant allows the developer to automate the repeated process involved in the development of J2EE/J2SE application.

Developers can easily write the script to automate the build process like compilation, archiving and deployment.

Ant (originally an acronym for Another Neat Tool), is a build tool with special support for the Java programming language but can be used for just about everything. Ant is platform-independent; it is written purely in Java. Ant is particularly good at automating complicated repetitive tasks and thus is well suited for automating standardized build processes. Ant accepts instructions in the form of XML documents thus are extensible and easy to maintain.

The Official Definition:
“Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like make, without make’s wrinkles.”
-  ant.apache.org

It can take care of archiving, compilation, execution, documentation, deployment, and much more.

Ant is cross platform and portable.

Ant is well suited to a large number of automation and scripting tasks.

Ant is not a coding language.

Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies. By default the XML file is named build.xml.

ANT Benefits

    Platform independent
Requires only a JDK 1.1 or later JVM.
Easy to use
Built-in tasks accomplish all typical build functions.
User contributed tasks cover most other needs.
Easy to extend
Create a new task by writing Java code.

ANT Capabilities

• Compile java applications
• Create javadoc documentation
• Create jar, zip, tar, war files
• Delete and copy files
• Send mail
• Validate XML files
• Ant can get source code from version control
  • CVS, Subversion, Synergy, Perforce, ClearCase and many more
  • Ant can run unit tests
• JUnit3, JUnit4, TestNG, or any arbitrary test application

Related articles

• Introduction to ANT (clean-clouds.com)
• Maven~Software Tool for Project Management and Builds Automation (clean-clouds.com)
• Writing Custom Task in Ant (clean-clouds.com)
• How ANT works? (clean-clouds.com)
• Sample Ant Build (clean-clouds.com)
• How to install Ant? (clean-clouds.com)
• ANT Overview, Structure & Basics (Build File) (clean-clouds.com)
• Checkstyle~A static code analysis tool (clean-clouds.com)
• Junit ant task – JUnitTask was not found (stackoverflow.com)
• Built-in Tasks in Ant (clean-clouds.com)