Complete Build Management for Java The Definitive Guide O'REILLY’ Jesse Tilly & Eric M. Burke Foreword by James Duncan DavidsonAnt The Definitive Guide Jesse Tilly and Eric M. Burke Foreword by James Duncan Davidson O’REILLY* Bejing = Cambridge + Famham + Kbin + Paris + Sebastapol + Taipei = TokyoAnt: The Definitive Guide by Jesse Tilly and Erie M. Burke Copyright © 2002 O'Reilly & Associates, Ine. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Published by OReilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472, O'Reilly & Associates books may be purchased for educational, business, of sales promotional use, Online editions are also available for most ticles (safarioreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (600) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Jonathan Gennick Colleen Gorman Hanna Dyer Interior Designer: David Futato Printing History: May 2002: First Edition Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O'Reilly logo are registered: tradematks of OReilly & Associates, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O'Reilly & Asseciates, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. The association between the image of a homed lizard and the topic of Antis a trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Ine, Java and all Java-based wademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc, in the United States and other countries, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc, is independent of Sun Microsystems. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and the authors assume no responsibility for errors ar omissions, ot for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN: 0-596-00184-3 (M)Java O’REILLY* Ant: The Definitive Guide In 1998 one programmer changed the world of Java. Frustrated by his efforts to create a 5 cross-platform build of Tomcat using the build tools of the day (GNU Make, batch files, and shell scripts), James Duncan Davidson threw together his own build utility on an airplane flight from Europe to the U.S. Named Ant because it was a litle thing that could build big things, James's quick-and-dirty solution to his own problem of creating a cross- platform build has evolved into what is perhaps the most widely used build management tool in Java environments. If you're developing in Java and not using Ant, you owe it to yourself to invest in this litle book. Ant is a reliable, cross-platform build tool that takes full advantage of the Java environment. Ant is itself written in Java. Ant works on multiple platforms—Unix, Linux, Windows, ete—so your investment in learning Ant won't be wasted when you switch development platforms. Ant is easily extensible, Does your project have a requirement not currently met by any of Ant's functionality? No problem! Do like James, and write your own Ant task. Who knows, you too may change the world. Here's a sampling of what you can accomplish using Ant * Define build chunks, the results that they must produce, and the dependencies between them © Automatically retrieve source code from source control systems such as CVS + Build applications by having Ant not only compile the necessary source files in the proper order, but also generate the JAR files you need for deployment * Doll of the above from a single build file (or set of build files) that will function identically on every platform that Ant supports Doing any eXtreme Programming? Ant is a must-have tool, enabling frequent builds to be done conveniently, which in turn facilitates test-driven development using JUnit and related technologies. Ant buildfiles are written using XML—a well-established standard—so your use of Ant will not require you to lear yet another scripting language. Ant is an open source effort, part of the Jakarta project hosted by the Apache Software Foundation, ‘Jesse and Erie do a great fob teaching you bow to use Ant as it exists today. The book offers you indepth information and details bow to extend Ant to do things that it was never envisioned to do. Whether you are a casual user or needing to manage large and diverse Projects, this is the book that you sbould keep close at band.” James Duncan Davidson, Creator of Ant Us $94.95 ISBN 0-596-00184-3 CAM $54.95 90000 | (li ine We on the Web 9 "780596'00184 1 www. oreilly.com "e920'00184 4 5