An Introduction to Ant Overview What is Ant Installing Ant Anatomy of a build file Projects Properties Targets Tasks Example build file Running a build file What is Ant Ant is a Java based tool for automating the build process Similar to make but implemented using Java Platform independent commands works on Windows Mac Unix XML based format Avoids the dreaded tab issue in make files Easily extendable using Java classes Ant is an open source free Apache project Automating the Build C make The goal is to automate the build process a out driver o foo o bar o gcc driver o foo o bar o driver o driver c foo h bar h gcc c driver c foo o foo c foo h gcc c foo c bar o gcc c bar c a out gcc driver o foo o bar o foo o gcc c foo c foo c foo h driver o gcc c driver c driver c bar o gcc c bar c bar h bar c linux3 1 make gcc c driver c gcc c foo c gcc c bar c gcc driver o foo o bar o linux3 2 Installing Ant Ant can be downloaded from http ant apache org Ant comes bundled as a zip file or a tarball Simply unwrap the file to some directory where you want to store the executables I typically unwrap the zip file into C Program Files and rename to C Program Files ant This directory is known as ANT HOME Ant Setup Set the ANT HOME environment variable to where you installed Ant Add the ANT HOME bin directory to your path Set the JAVA HOME environment variable to the location where you installed Java Setting environment variables Windows right click My Computer Properties Advanced Environment Variables UNIX shell specific settings Project Organization The following example assumes that your workspace will be organized like so Project Directory build xml src bin doc java class html Anatomy of a Build File Ant s build files are written in XML Convention is to call file build xml Each build file contains A project At least 1 target Targets are composed of some number of tasks Build files may also contain properties Like macros in a make file Comments are within blocks Projects The project tag is used to define the project you wish to work with Projects tags typically contain 3 attributes name a logical name for the project default the default target to execute basedir the base directory for which all operations are done relative to Additionally a description for the project can be specified from within the project tag Build File project name Sample Project default compile basedir description A sample build file for this project description project Properties Build files may contain constants known as properties to assign a value to a variable which can then be used throughout the project Makes maintaining large build files more manageable Projects can have a set of properties Property tags consist of a name value pair Analogous to macros from make Build File with Properties project name Sample Project default compile basedir description A sample build file for this project description global properties for this build file property name source dir location src property name build dir location bin property name doc dir location doc project Targets The target tag has the following required attribute name the logical name for a target Targets may also have optional attributes such as depends a list of other target names for which this task is dependant upon the specified task s get executed first description a description of what a target does Like make files targets in Ant can depend on some number of other targets For example we might have a target to create a jarfile which first depends upon another target to compile the code A build file may additionally specify a default target Build File with Targets project name Sample Project default compile basedir set up some directories used by this project target name init description setup project directories target Compile the java code in src dir into build dir target name compile depends init description compile java sources target Generate javadocs for current project into docs dir target name doc depends init description generate documentation target Delete the build doc directories and Emacs backup files target name clean description tidy up the workspace target project Tasks A task represents an action that needs execution Tasks have a variable number of attributes which are task dependant There are a number of build in tasks most of which are things which you would typically do as part of a build process Create a directory Compile java source code Run the javadoc tool over some files Create a jar file from a set of files Remove files directories And many many others For a full list see http ant apache org manual coretasklist html Initialization Target Tasks Our initialization target creates the build and documentation directories The mkdir task creates a directory project name Sample Project default compile basedir set up some directories used by this project target name init description setup project directories mkdir dir build dir mkdir dir doc dir target project Compilation Target Tasks Our compilation target will compile all java files in the source directory The javac task compiles sources into classes Note the dependence on the init task project name Sample Project default compile basedir Compile the java code in src dir into build dir target name compile depends init description compile java sources javac srcdir source dir destdir build dir target project Javadoc Target Tasks Our documentation target will create the HTML documentation The javadoc task generates HTML documentation for all sources project name Sample Project default compile basedir Generate javadocs for current project into doc dir target name doc depends init description generate documentation javadoc sourcepath source dir destdir doc dir target project Cleanup Target Tasks We can also use ant to tidy up our workspace The delete task removes files directories from the file system project name Sample Project default compile basedir Delete the build doc directories and Emacs backup files target name clean description tidy up the workspace delete dir build dir delete dir doc dir delete fileset defaultexcludes no dir source dir includes delete target project Completed Build File 1 of 2 project name Sample Project default compile basedir description A sample build file for this project description global properties for this build file property name source dir location src property name build dir location bin property name doc dir location doc set up some directories used by this