In this section, you will learn about the java ant tool. Apache Ant is a software tool, which is similar to ?make? (make is a utility for automatically building large applications) but is written in the Java language, requires the Java platform and is best suited for building Java projects. Noticeable difference between Ant and make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas make has its Make file format. In ant, XML file is always named as the build.xml.
Ant is an Apache's project. It is open source software and is released under the Apache Software License. Ant allows the developer to automate the repeated process involved in the development of JEE applications. Developers can easily write the script to automate the build process like compilation, archiving and deployment. Getting Hands-on Ant For this article I am using jdk1.6.0 and Application Server JBoss 3.2.3 to deploy and test JEE application.
Ant is a platform-independent scripting tool that constructs your build scripts. A large number of built-in tasks in Ant without any customization can be used.
Ant extends Java classes for writing shell commands, the configuration files are XML-based, calling out a target tree where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object that implements a particular Task interface.
Cross Platform: The use of Java to develop Ant makes it the perfect solution for those people who are developing programs to run or to built across a range of different operating systems using build.xml.
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