User:Minooz/Ant

ANT

Apache Website

Manual

Index of Manual/Tasks

JUnit Task

Tutorials

• Eclipse based Tutorial
• Notes from Jordan Anastasiade tutorial

Ant is a Java-based build tool. Instead of a model where it is extended with shell-based commands, ant 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.

Installing Ant :

Add the bin directory to your path. Set the ANT_HOME environment variable to the directory where you installed Ant. Assume ant is installed in c:\ant\. The following sets up the environment:

set ANT_HOME=c:\ant

set JAVA_HOME=...

set PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin

ant buildfiles are written in XML – build.xml. Each buildfile contains one project and at least one (default) target.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- compile java files from all subdirectories -->
  <project name="First" default="build" basedir=".">
    <target name="build" >
      <javac srcdir="."
        debug="false"
        optimize="false"
        includes="**/*.java"
      />
    </target>
  </project>

A project has three attributes:

name the name of the project.

default the default target to use when no target is supplied.

basedir the base directory from which all path calculations are done

Each project defines one or more targets which are a set of task elements you want to execute

When starting ant, you can select which target(s) you want to have executed