"Ant: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition" Released by O'Reilly

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com
	
Streamline the Build Process with
the Latest Advancements in Ant Technology
O'Reilly Releases "Ant: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition"

Sebastopol, CA--Developers often consider build tools to be "in the
background" tools. A good build tool takes source code, compiles it, and
creates a working application. But for many developers, the build process
turns into a nightmare when it involves working with multiple source
files, with multiple dependencies, and the need to check code out of a
central repository automatically, test the code, and deploy it to some
remote destination. As Steve Holzner, author of "Ant: The Definitive
Guide, Second Edition" (O'Reilly US $34.95), recounts, "You can end up
with dozens of tasks to complete each time you want to build your
application, which is the last thing you want to spend time on when you're
already brain-dead from an all-night debugging session. When new members
join your team, you'll have to walk through this whole process again,
showing them the ropes and hoping they don't break anything in the
process. It's for all of these reasons that developers--and especially
Java programmers--turn to Ant."

In 1998, James Duncan Davidson created Ant because he was frustrated
trying to create a cross-platform build with the tools that were
available.  Since its development, Ant has evolved into one of the most
widely used build management tools in the Java environment.  Some of the
most popular projects in the Java universe were built using
Ant--everything from Tomcat to JBoss to Turbine can go from source to
binary by typing "ant."

Like most popular technologies, Ant quickly went through several revision
cycles. Each new cycle introduced more functionality and more complexity.
Ant rapidly evolved from a simple-to-learn build tool into a full-fledged
testing and deployment environment.

As Holzner explains, "Ant is an extraordinary tool, and it fills a
long-standing need among developers. No longer do you have to try to
remember the 50 steps to build your project and make sure you do them in
the right order or try to get finicky makefiles just right. Now you've got
a true build tool that's genuinely easy to work with and outstandingly
powerful. If you've never used Ant, you're in for a treat."

The new edition of "Ant: The Definitive Guide" has been reworked, revised,
and expanded to cover Ant 1.6.  It documents the new ways that Ant is
being applied as well as the array of optional tasks that Ant supports.
Clear step-by-step instructions show how to use Ant from installing it
through the entire build and test process.  Other topics covered in the
book include:

-Developing conditional builds and handling error conditions
-Automatically retrieving source code from version control systems
-Using Ant with XML files
-Using Ant with JavaServer Pages to build web applications
-Using Ant with Enterprise JavaBeans to build enterprise applications

Far exceeding the previous edition in terms of information and detail,
"Ant: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition" is a must-have reference for
Java developers unfamiliar with the latest advancements in Ant technology.
With this book close at hand, any developer will soon be up to speed on
the premier tool for cross-platform development.

Praise for the previous edition:

"This book is exactly what O'Reilly does best. Ant, a modular XML-based
replacement for Make, is quickly becoming the standard way to build Java
programs. [The authors] describe how it works, how to drive it, and how to
extend its functionality with Java plug-ins. Most of the details are in
Ant's online documentation, but their explanations are definitely worth
the price of the book. Oh, and their code fot is nice and readable, too."
--Gregory V. Wilson, "Dr. Dobb's Journal"

"A great book."
--Don Denoncourt, Iseries News

"A clear, example-driven exploration of the tools at hand...Their book
follows O'Reilly's time-tested and market-proven simple-examples technique
to illustrate how to use Ant for your projects. The chapters in the first
half of the book outline how to use and extend Ant for your project. The
strength of the book may be the way the authors casually include practical
advice about the bugs and idiosyncrasies of the tool."
--Peter Wayner, Slashdot.org

Additional Resources:

Chapter 6, "Getting Source Code from CVS Repositories," is available
online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/anttdg2/chapter/index.html

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/anttdg2/index.html

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596006...

Ant: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition
Steve Holzner
ISBN: 0-596-00609-8, 316 pages, $34.95 US, $48.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472

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