Intro to ANT

ANT is a build tool. It helps make performing repetitive tasks that don't require human interaction easier. There are many built in tasks that come bundled with ANT and also many external tasks written by tool vendors or available from the open source community.

It is a script language in .XML format, making it easy to read and edit. The scripts can be easily organised and maintained. They enable automation of routine tasks and remove human error, which results in saved time. Once done, the scripts can be used very easily with a few mouse clicks from within a tool like WSAD.

Ant scripts are made up of targets. These targets are the items that will be run. Targets can depend upon other targets to be run first and they can also be called from within other targets.

Targets are made up of one or more tasks. Tasks are the actual work job that performs some action. They can be as simple as echoing a message, to building and deploying an EJB, to managing whole installations.

Scripts contain properties. Properties are named variables containing a value. They can be set at script level, at target level, and in some cases, even at task level. They can be used within the current script or by other scripts called from the current script. The visibility of the property is based upon the parent ... the first script to declare a property is the one that the value is read from. Properties can also be passed to external ANT scripts or instances of ANT.

What is needed by developers to use the ANT tasks already written for common use at our company is described in these pages. These can be used from within a component or J2EE project. What is described here is just what has been made available at this point and is open to further development.

Last Updated Monday, November 21 2005 @ 07:38 PM CST; 1,624 Hits