Ant Tutorial

Ant tutorial section describes you about the Apache Ant for building Java projects.

Ant Tutorial

Ant Tutorial

In this section we will learn about the various aspect of Apache Ant such as what is Apache Ant, what is build tool, how to configure ant, download and install apache ant etc.

What is Build Tool ?

Build Tool is the tool for automating repetitive tasks. This tool makes the tasks automate like code compiling, packaging the binaries, deployment of binaries to the test server, running software tests, copy code from one location to another, creating files and documentation for the software deployment etc. Build tools are generally run from the command line. Java build tools that are used mostly are as follows : Apache Ant, Maven, and Gradle.

What is Apache Ant ?

As we have seen in the above paragraph, Apache Ant is a popular build tool for Java platform. It is also known as Another Neat Tool. The primary task of Ant is to build and deployed the Java projects and can be executed from a command line but, it can be used for doing almost all possible repetitive tasks.

Features of Ant

  • It is the most complete Java build and deployment tool.
  • It is platform independent however, it can deal with the platform specific properties like file separators.
  • Ant can be easily learn preferably who are familiar with XML because Ant script is written in XML.
  • Ant is able to various tasks as it available with the predefined tasks.
  • Ant allows for developing custom tasks.
  • It can be easily integrated with the IDEs however, Ant can be run easily from command line.

How To Configure Ant?

Ant is configured into an XML file. The default name of the configuration file is build.xml. All the configuration specification is provided into this file. There are three sections on which the Ant build relies on. These are tasks, target, extension points.

  • Tasks : Task is a work which should be performed. A task can be small, atomic and can be grouped into targets. Example of a task can be compilation of source code, create Javadoc etc.
     
  • Target : Target specifies the dependencies over each other. Ant can invoke the target directly and can execute the dependent target automatically.

Download And Install Apache Ant On Windows

To download the latest version of Apache Ant please go through the link http://ant.apache.org and download the binaries files. Unzip the zip file at the specified location. Then create a new environment variable called "ANT_HOME" and value should be indicated to the Ant installation folder. For example, c:\apache-ant-1.8.2-bin. In the PATH environment variables the path c:\apache-ant-1.8.2-bin\bin should be append to Apache Ant batch file.

For reading more in detail about Apache Ant and the various of examples you may go through the following link http://www.roseindia.net/tutorials/ant/index.shtml

Tutorials

  1. Apache Ant - Building Simple Java Projects
  2. How to generate build.xml file
  3. Ant built-in Properties
  4. Using Ant to execute class file
  5. Executes a Java class within the Ant VM
  6. Ant Script to Create Mysql Table
  7. Ant Script to Insert Data in Mysql Table
  8. Ant Script to Update Mysql Table
  9. Using Ant Build Scripts to Drop Mysql Table
  10. Ant and JUnit
  11. Value in the properties file overwrite the value in the build.xml
  12. Built In Properties
  13. Check Properties
  14. Ant make directory with relative path
  15. Ant Custom Properties
  16. How to set memory used by JVM in Ant
  17. Redefine property in the children Target
  18. Path Separator
  19. Convert the path in to properties
  20. File Separator
  21. ANT Tutorials
  22. ANT Tutorials
  23. Ant Tutorial