On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, King Dale wrote:
>I don't mean to be a troll, but I have been trying to find a good Java build
>tool. I have seen lots of hype about Ant and have looked at it and I'd just
>like to say I am not that impressed. I am hoping someone can show me where I
>am wrong. Maybe there are some better ways to do things as all I have seen
>are simple build script examples.
The reason I love Ant is:
1. very easy to write and understand the build.xml file, unlike the Makefiles.
2. Ant is super fast. On an average, it is atleast 10 times faster than make
files. See this article for why it is sooo fast:
http://www.lutris.com/journal/January2001/articles/antEnhydra.html
(You need to register with the Lutris Enhydra journal at
http://www.lutris.com/products/journal_registration.html)
3. It is platform-independent.
4. There is only one build file for the whole project and no need for a
makefile in each directory and a lot of other make related files such as
config.mk, top.Makefile, etc, and etc....
5. Lot of custom tasks for Java related tasks such as jar, war, ear, javadoc,
and a lot more. See
http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/jakarta-ant/docs/
for a list of all the Ant tasks.
There are a lot of other advantages for Ant, but these are the ones I could
think of in 2 minutes.
Shireesh Thanneru
