Apache Ant

Apache Ant

'Apache Ant' (or simply Ant) is an XML-based build scripting language used heavily by the Open Source community. Ant automates tasks such as compiling source code, building deployment packages and automatically checking dependencies of what items need to be updated in a build set.

Background

This wikibook was based on a presentation created by Dan McCreary for the Minnesota Java Open Source User Group. Dan felt strongly that a gentle introduction to Ant was necessary for new people to easily learn Ant. The existing Ant documentation, although useful for advanced Ant users, did not meet the needs of most beginners. For example in the Apache documentation, advanced concepts such as token filters were placed directly in the introduction for beginners. The introductory material also did not contain full examples with complete sample build files and expected output. Something else was needed. At the same time the introductory material assumed that the reader was familiar with XML. This material covers some of the material you need to know about XML to build Ant scripts.

This Wikibook is also designed to work with other XML-related programming wikibooks such as XML Schema and XForms.

Book Structure

This document has an introduction page for people just getting started. Mostly hello world information to get a flavor for what Ant is and how it is used. At the end there are six sections:

Introduction

Background - History and motivation for Apache Ant
Adoption - How and why organizations should adopt Apache Ant
XML Summary - A short review of XML syntax for people that are not familiar with XML. This section can easily be skipped by users that already know about XML file structure.
Getting Started

Installation How to download and install Apache Ant
Testing How to test Apache Ant
Hello World How to run a small ant program that prints "Hello World!"
Core Concepts - Core Terms and Concepts useful to Ant developers
Terminology - Terminology (projects, targets and tasks)
Build File Structure- The structure of a build file
Property Using Properties
Depends Setting up Dependencies
Fileset Using Fileset
Best Practices

Ant Best Practices - Best practices such as how to set up an Ant file
Standard Targets - A list of standard targets such as init and clean
Local Property Files - how to use a local property file
Local File Systems - removing local file system dependencies
Examples

Ant Cookbook - A set of small complete working example programs that demonstrate examples of how to use Apache Ant
Depends - shows how to use the targets depends attribute
Property - shows how to use an Ant property
Fileset - shows how to use an Ant fileset
Ant Tasks that Manipulate XML

XML - how Ant can be used to process XML documents

XMLwellformed - how to use Apache ant to check an XML file for well formedness
XMLvalidate - how to use Apache ant to validate an XML file agains an XML Schema
XSLT - how to use Apache ant to run an XML transform
Running Saxon - how to use Apache ant to run Saxon
Passing Parameters to XSLT - How to pass parameters to an XSLT transform from Apache Ant
XQuery - Using XQuery to transform XML documents
Ant Tasks that Manipulate eXist

Store XML data - an ant task that will store collection into eXist
Reindex a Collection - an ant task that can reindex an eXist collection
Execute an XQuery - a sample ant task to execute an XQuery
Creating a .xar file - a sample ant task to create an XML archive file for packing modules or apps
References

References - where to get more information on Apache Ant
See Also

XForms - how to use XForms to create and update XML files to create web form "front-ends" to your Ant scripts
XQuery - how to use XQuery to generate and update your Ant build files