Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects.
The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and Make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas Make uses Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml.
Ant is an Apache project. It is open source software, and is released under the Apache Software License.
Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects.
The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and Make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas Make uses Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml.
Ant is an Apache project. It is open source software, and is released under the Apache Software License.
History
Ant ("Another Neat Tool"[1]) was conceived by James Duncan Davidson while preparing Sun's reference JSP/Servlet engine, later Apache Tomcat, for release as open source. A proprietary version of make was used to build it on the Solaris Operating Environment, but in the open source world there was no way of controlling which platform was used to build Tomcat; so Ant was created as a simple platform-independent tool to build Tomcat from directives in an XML "build file". Ant (version 1.1) was officially released as a stand-alone product on July 19, 2000.
Several proposals for an Ant version 2 have been made, such as AntEater by James Duncan Davidson, Myrmidon by Peter Donald and Mutant by Conor MacNeill, none of which were able to find large acceptance with the developer community.[2]
At one time (2002), Ant was the build tool used by most Java development projects.[3] For example, most open source Java developers include build.xml files with their distribution.[citation needed]
Because Ant made it trivial to integrate JUnit tests with the build process, Ant made it easy for willing developers to adopt test-driven development, and even Extreme Programming.
Limitations
Ant build files are written in XML. For unfamiliar users, both XML itself and the complex structure (hierarchical, partly ordered, and pervasively cross-linked) of Ant documents can be a barrier to learning. A GUI called Antidote was available for a time, but never gained a following and has been retired from the Apache project. Moreover, the language of Ant is quite verbose, and the build files of large or complex projects become unmanageably large. Good design and modularization of build files can improve readability but not necessarily reduce size. Other build tools like Maven use more concise scripts at the expense of generality and flexibility.
Many of the older tasks—the core ones that are used every day, such as
, and —use default values for options that are not consistent with more recent versions of the tasks. Changing those defaults would break existing Ant scripts.
When expanding properties in a string or text element, undefined properties are not raised as an error, but left as an unexpanded reference (e.g. ${unassigned.property}).
Ant has limited fault handling rules, and no persistence of state, so it cannot be used as a workflow tool for any workflow other than classic build and test processes.
Lazy property evaluation is not supported. For instance, when working within an Antcontrib loop, a property cannot be re-evaluated for a sub-value which may be part of the iteration. (Again you can workaround this depending on the third-party extension you're using; AntXtras flow-control tasksets do provide for cursor redefinition for loops.)
In makefiles, any rule to create one file type from another file type can be written inline within the makefile. For example, you may transform a document into some other format by using rules to execute another tool. Creating a similar task in Ant is more complex: a separate task must be written in Java and included with the Ant build file in order to handle the same type of functionality. However, this separation can enhance the readability of the Ant script by hiding some of the details of how a task is executed on different platforms.
There exists a myriad of third-party Ant extensions (called antlibs) that provide much of the missing functionality. Also the Eclipse IDE can build and execute Ant scripts while the NetBeans IDE uses Ant for its internal build system. As both these IDEs are very popular development platforms, they can simplify Ant use significantly (as a bonus Ant scripts generated by NetBeans can be used outside of that IDE as standalone scripts).