-
- A N T
-
-
- What is it?
- -----------
-
- Ant is a Java based build tool. In theory it is kind of like "make"
- without makes wrinkles and with the full portability of pure java code.
-
-
- Why?
- ----
-
- Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam,
- and others? Because all of those tools have limitations that its original
- author couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms.
-
- Make-like tools are inherently shell based. They evaluate a set of
- dependencies and then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a
- shell. This means that you can easily extend these tools by using or writing
- any program for the OS that you are working on. However, this also means that
- you limit yourself to the OS, or at least the OS type such as Unix, that you
- are working on.
-
- Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any
- time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing
- because I have a space in front of my tab!!!" said the original author of Ant
- way too many times. Tools like Jam took care of this to a great degree, but
- still use yet another format to use and remember.
-
- Ant is different. Instead a model where it is extended with shell based
- commands, it is extended using Java classes. Instead of 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 which
- implements a particular Task interface.
-
- Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent by being
- able to construct a shell command such as `find . -name foo -exec rm {}` but
- it gives you the ability to be cross platform. To work anywhere and
- everywhere. And hey, if you really need to execute a shell command, Ant has
- an exec rule that allows different commands to be executed based on the OS
- that it is executing on.
-
- The Latest Version
- ------------------
-
- Details of the latest version can be found on the Apache Jakarta
- Project web site <http://jakarta.apache.org/>.
-
-
- Documentation
- -------------
-
- Documentation is available in HTML format, in the docs/ directory.
-
-
- Licensing
- ---------
-
- This software is licensed under the terms you may find in the file
- named "LICENSE" in this directory.
-
-
- Thanks for using Ant.
-
- The Apache Jakarta Project
- <http://jakarta.apache.org/>
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