Antoine Levy Lambert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The self description of Ant on the home page might not have changed
> since the first release in 2000. I have just written a draft for a new
> version (see below).
>
> Let me know what you think.
>
> Antoine
>
>
>
> What is Ant
> ----------
>
> Ant is a Java library and command line tool. Ant's mission is to
> schedule processes described in build files as targets and extension
> points dependent upon each other. The main known usage of Ant is the
> build of java applications, for which Ant supplies a number of built-in
> tasks allowing to compile, assemble, test and run java applications. Ant
> can also be used effectively to build non java applications, for
> instance C or C++ applications. More generally, Ant can be used to
> schedule any type of process which can be described in terms of targets
> and tasks.
>
> Ant is written in Java. Users of Ant can develop their own antlibs
> containing Ant tasks and types, and are offered a large number of
> ready-made commercial or open source antlibs.
>
> Ant is extremely flexible and does not impose coding conventions or
> directory layouts to the Java projects which adopt it as a build tool.
>
> Software development projects looking for a solution combining build
> tool and dependency management can use Ant in combination with Ivy.
>
>
> Alternatives to Ant
> -------------------
>
> When Ant was first released in July 2000, Ant compared itself to Make,
> the usual command line tool used to build software, probably still the
> most common solution to build C applications. Make is extensible too,
> but only by writing shell-scripts or executable programs that Make can
> execute. Makefiles are syntactically difficult to write and sensitive to
> invisible or little noticeable characters such as spaces ...
>
> Currently, in the Java world, one of the most famous alternatives to Ant
> is Maven. Maven defines itself with a wider scope than Ant as a project
> management tool. Maven provides built-in build, packaging, testing and
> running capabilities, and tools to create a website and project metrics.
> Java projects adopting Maven as a project management tool are given some
> conventions to follow, particularly concerning the layout of source and
> test directories. These conventions can be overriden by configuration.
> Maven also integrates dependency management and the maven team maintains
> a public repository containing a large number of artifacts. Maven
> implements a predefined build cycle containing predefined phases and goals.
>
> A recent, and worth mentioning alternative to Ant is Gradle, a new tool
> which allows to write build files in Groovy, which a lot of people feel
> is easier and more expressive than the traditional Ant XML. One nice
> thing for Ant is that Gradle is actually built on top of Ant and Ivy, so
> our tasks and types are used inside Gradle.
>
>
>

Just a note...I also noticed recently that the Wikipedia entry on Ant
is pretty out-of-date too. Perhaps after the Ant developers have
approved a new description, some of it can be transplanted to update
that description as well...just a thought...

-The Wabbit

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