Another Neat Tool (Ant), despite its modest name , is a powerful platform-independent build tool. By creating XML files to develop build tasks, you can extend Ant to solve a host of problems, taking it far beyond simple code compilation. Ant s focus on code completion and application building is its strength and weakness. Ant does solve some problems programmatically. However, it is not intended to be a programming language. This reference covers most of Ant s built-in tasks and a few optional tasks that relate to the content of this book. The task descriptions are concise and organized into logical groupings for easier reference.
After following Ant s installation instructions, you can execute build.xml files by simply typing ant at the command prompt. If you re using someone else s buildfile, you should investigate its purpose and functionality before running it. If the creator of the buildfile has described its main tasks, that extended help/usage will be available using the projecthelp switch.
Throughout this chapter, an asterisk (*) after a parameter name indicates that this is a required parameter in the task s simplest form.
The general syntax for the ant command line is as follows :
ant [options] [target [target2 [target3] ...]]
Simple buildfiles won t require most of these switches. However, if your buildfile is not named build.xml, you will need to specify the buildfile s name by using the -buildfile option; to execute a target other than the default, use the following:
ant -buildfile [ANT file] [target]
Command line options displayed from Ant s help option are as follows:
-help print this message -projecthelp print project help information -version print the version information and exit -quiet be extra quiet -verbose be extra verbose -debug print debugging information -emacs produce logging information without adornments -logfile [file] use given file for log output -logger [classname] the class that is to perform logging -listener [classname] add an instance of class as a project listener -buildfile [file] use specified buildfile -find [file] search for buildfile towards the root of the filesystem and use the first one found -Dproperty=[value] set property to value
Ant uses XML files to execute. The default name of Ant s XML file is build.xml. If an Ant user types ant with no other commands, Ant will attempt to open build.xml. Ant s build.xml file must contain the XML version and encoding:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
If you are not familiar with XML encoding, be aware that comments are written as follows:
<!-- comment goes here -->