10 Minutes Guide to Ant
Introduction
Well for the next 10 minutes get ready to devote to the ant guide. This will
make some sence to the ant.
Ant is a free tool under GNU Licence and is freely available at http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/
, current version of ant is 1.4.1. Ant allows the developer to automate the
repeated process involved in the development of J2EE application. Developers can
easily write the script to automate the build process like compilation,
archiving and deployment.
For this tutorial I am using 1.4.1 and jdk1.4. I am also using Jboss 3.0
(with tomcat) downloaded from http://www.apache.org
to deploy and test J2EE application developed in this lesson. In order to understand this tutorial you should have a solid knowledge of java programming
and development of web application using java technologies.
Lesson 1
Downloading and Installing Ant
Before installing Ant make sure you have JDK1.3 or above installed on your
machine.
For this tutorial download ant from http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/
and unzip the file into your favorite directory.
Set the class path to the bin directory of the ant.
Let's assume that Ant is installed in c:\ant\. The following
code has to be put into autoexec.bat file:
set ANT_HOME=c:\ant
set JAVA_HOME=c:\jdk1.3
set PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin
Testing Ant
Go to command prompt and issue the following command.
C:\anttest>Ant
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!Build failed
C:\anttest>
|
If every this is installed correctly Ant will give the above message.
Now its time to do some work with Ant.
Ant uses configuration file called build.xml to work. This is the file
where you defines the process of compiling, building and deploying.
Writing build.xml file
build.xml is a xml file used by ant utility to compile, build and deploy
or run the application.
Now here is code of simple build.xml file which compiles a java file
present in src directory and places compiled class file in build/src
directory.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Build file for our first application -->
<project name="Ant test project" default="build"
basedir=".">
<target name="build" >
<javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/src"
debug="true"
includes="**/*.java"
/>
</target>
</project>
|
First line of the build.xml file represents the document type declaration.
Next line is comment entry. Third line is the project tag. Each buildfile
contains one project tag and all the instruction are written in the project tag.
The project tag:
<project name="Ant test project" default="build"
basedir=".">
requires three attributes namely name, default and basedir.
Here is the description of the attributes:
| Attribute |
Description |
| name |
Represents the name of the project. |
| default |
Name of the default target to use when no target is
supplied. |
| basedir |
Name of the base directory from which all path
calculations are done. |
All the attributes are required.
One project may contain one or more targets. In this example there is only
one target.
<target name="build" >
<javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/src"
debug="true"
includes="**/*.java"
/>
</target>
Which uses task javac to compile the java files.
Here is the code of our test1.java file which is to be compiled by the Ant
utility.
class test1{
public static void main (String args[]){
System.out.println("This is example 1");
}
}
|
Download the code of this tutorial and unzip it in c:\. files will be
unzipped in anttest directory. To run the Ant utility to compile the file go to c:\anttest\example1 and issue ant command. You will receive the following out put.
C:\anttest\example1>ant
Buildfile: build.xml
build:
[javac] Compiling 1 source file to C:\anttest\example1\build\src
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 4 seconds
C:\anttest\example1>
|
Above mentioned process compiles the file and places in the build\src
directory.
In the next lesson I will show you how to use ant to compile, build and
deploy your web application to the Jboss 3.0
|
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Current Comments
39 comments so far (post your own) View All Comments Latest 10 Comments:An unexpected error has been detected by Java Runtime Environment:
EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
Posted by Milind on Sunday, 06.1.08 @ 13:42pm | #61690
log4j:ERROR Could not parse input source [org.xml.sax.InputSource@4b497311].
this is a error which generates when i m trying to run EJB .i m using log4j for writing debug statement .i m using IBM WAS 6.0 .
please help
Posted by roshanloyalka on Wednesday, 02.13.08 @ 14:47pm | #48139
Hi,
this is very good for beginers in java.
Thanks
Posted by indeevar on Monday, 12.24.07 @ 15:51pm | #43578
this is a good tutorial site and thanks alot!
Posted by Jimmy Lam on Sunday, 12.9.07 @ 12:26pm | #41640
Great Tutorial and very easy to understand..
Posted by Debugger on Monday, 11.19.07 @ 12:29pm | #37795
Hai Friends,
Roseindia site is very good site and easy understandable.i think it is fairly useful help to software people.
Thanks
Manu
Posted by manu on Monday, 11.12.07 @ 19:25pm | #36981
great one to read from the beginning.
Posted by Loganathan on Monday, 09.10.07 @ 14:38pm | #26576
Hi Friends,
The above example is very simple & easy to use. Thanks a lot for posting
Posted by Udhaya Ganesh on Wednesday, 09.5.07 @ 16:15pm | #25092
I have all workers on the ant now. It is like a tower of ants thanks to this tutorial. I ask, "what is ant?" and they now answer.
Posted by Java Boss on Thursday, 08.30.07 @ 03:33am | #24467
Hi
i am working in Accenture as a software developer my current project is on online intenet banking do u help in the project by making the use of the ejbs and how to make the proejects using the ejbs
Posted by jaggu on Thursday, 08.16.07 @ 11:28am | #23490