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71 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
71 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
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A N T
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What is it?
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-----------
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Ant is a Java based build tool. In theory it is kind of like "make"
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without makes wrinkles and with the full portability of pure java code.
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Why?
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----
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Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam,
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and others? Because all of those tools have limitations that its original
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author couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms.
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Make-like tools are inherently shell based. They evaluate a set of
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dependencies and then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a
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shell. This means that you can easily extend these tools by using or writing
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any program for the OS that you are working on. However, this also means that
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you limit yourself to the OS, or at least the OS type such as Unix, that you
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are working on.
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Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any
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time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing
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because I have a space in front of my tab!!!" said the original author of Ant
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way too many times. Tools like Jam took care of this to a great degree, but
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still use yet another format to use and remember.
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Ant is different. Instead a model where it is extended with shell based
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commands, it is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell
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commands, the configuration files are XML based calling out a target tree
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where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object which
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implements a particular Task interface.
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Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent by being
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able to construct a shell command such as `find . -name foo -exec rm {}` but
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it gives you the ability to be cross platform. To work anywhere and
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everywhere. And hey, if you really need to execute a shell command, Ant has
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an exec rule that allows different commands to be executed based on the OS
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that it is executing on.
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The Latest Version
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------------------
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Details of the latest version can be found on the Apache Ant
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Project web site <http://ant.apache.org/>.
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Documentation
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-------------
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Documentation is available in HTML format, in the docs/ directory.
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For information about building and installing Ant, see
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docs/manual/index.html
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Licensing
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---------
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This software is licensed under the terms you may find in the file
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named "LICENSE" in this directory.
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Thanks for using Ant.
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The Apache Ant Project
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<http://ant.apache.org/>
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