"Ant, The Little Build Tool That Could"

For Immediate Release
June 21, 2002
For more information, a review copy, cover art,
or interview with the authors, contact:
Lisa Mann (707) 827-7096 or lisam@oreilly.com


NEW O'REILLY DEFINITIVE GUIDE EXPLORES 
"ANT, THE LITTLE BUILD TOOL THAT COULD"


Sebastopol, CA--"I have to confess that I had absolutely no idea that
Ant, the little build tool that could, would go as far as it did and
make such a mark on the Java developer community," says James Duncan
Davidson, the creator of Ant, in the foreword to the new book "Ant: The
Definitive Guide" (O'Reilly, US $34.95). "It might be that the key to
Ant's success is that it didn't try to be successful. It was a simple
solution to an obvious problem that many people were having.

In 1998, frustrated by his efforts to create a cross-platform build of
Tomcat using the build tools of the day (GNU Make, batch files, and
shell scripts), Davidson threw together his own build utility on an
airplane flight from Europe to the United States. Named Ant because it
was a little thing that could build big things, James's quick-and-dirty
solution to his own problem of creating a cross-platform build has
evolved into what is perhaps the most widely used build management tool
in Java environments.

"I love Ant. Ant is among the most important tools ever written for
Java," says Eric M. Burke, coauthor of "Ant: The Definitive Guide."
"Nearly every Java project uses Ant for its builds. I use it on a daily
basis. It is used by nearly every Java developer, and has been
integrated into every major Java IDE. Ant is critical to refactoring
and eXtreme Programming because development teams need to ensure that
every developer can build the project using identical configurations.
Ant provides this capability."

If you're developing in Java and not using Ant, you owe it to yourself
to invest in this little book. Ant is a reliable, cross-platform build
tool that takes full advantage of the Java environment. Ant is itself
written in Java. Ant works on multiple platforms--Unix, Linux, Windows,
etc.--so your investment in learning Ant won't be wasted when you
switch development platforms. Ant is easily extensible. Does your
project have a requirement not currently met by any of Ant's
functionality? No problem! Do like James, and write your own Ant task.

For eXtreme Programming, Ant is a must-have tool, enabling frequent
builds to be done conveniently, which in turn facilitates test-driven
development using JUnit and related technologies. Ant buildfiles are
written using XML--a well-established standard--so your use of Ant will
not require you to learn yet another scripting language. And Ant is an
open source effort, part of the Jakarta project hosted by the Apache
Software Foundation.

Here's a sampling of what you can accomplish using Ant:

-Define build chunks, the results that they must produce, and the
dependencies between them
-Automatically retrieve source code from source control systems such as
CVS
-Build applications by having Ant not only compile the necessary source
files in the proper order, but also generate the JAR files you need for
deployment

Do all of the above from a single build file (or set of build files)
that will function identically on every platform that Ant supports.

"Jesse and Eric do a great job of teaching you how to use Ant as it
exists today. The book offers you in-depth information and details on
how you use Ant to do things that it was never envisioned to do.
Whether you are a casual user or needing to manage large and diverse
projects, this is the book that you should keep close at hand." 
--James Duncan Davidson, Creator of Ant


Additional Resources:
An article about Ant on OnJava.com is available at:
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/02/22/open_source.html

An article by coauthor Jesse E. Tilly, "Using Ant and WebLogic EJBs,"
can be found at:
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/06/25/antejb.html

For information on Jesse Tilly's session at the 2002 O'Reilly Open
Source Conference see:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2002/view/e_sess/2789

"Ant: The Definitive Guide" is also available on Safari Books Online,
see: http://safari.oreilly.com/

Chapter 1, "Ant Jumpstart," is available free online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/anttdg/chapter/index.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
index, author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/anttdg/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596001843.jpg

Ant: The Definitive Guide
Complete Build Management for Java
By Eric M. Burke, Jesse E. Tilly
ISBN 0-596-00184-3, 288 pages, $34.95 (US) $54.95 (CAN)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com

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