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Introduction to Ant

Ant is a Java-based, platform-independent, open source build tool. It was formerly a sub-project in the Apache Jakarta project, but in November 2002, it was migrated to an Apache top-level project. Ant's function is similar to the make tool. Because it is Java-based and does not use any operating system-specific functions, it is platform independent, thus allowing you to build your projects using the same build script on any Java-enabled platform.

The Ant build operations are controlled by the contents of the XML-based script file. This file defines the operations, the order in which to run them, and the dependencies among them.

Ant comes with a large number of built-in tasks sufficient to perform many common build operations. However, if the tasks included are not sufficient, you also have the ability to extend Ant's functionality by using Java to develop your own specialized tasks. These tasks can then be plugged into Ant.

Not only can Ant be used to build your applications, it can also be used for many other operations such as retrieving source files from a version control system, storing the result back in the version control system, transferring the build output to other machines, deploying the applications, generating Javadoc, and sending messages when a build is finished.

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