Ant in Action: Covers Ant 1.7

by Steve Loughran and Erik Hatcher

This second edition of a Manning bestseller has been revised and re-titled to fit the 'In Action' Series by Steve Loughran, an Ant project committer. Ant in Action introduces Ant and how to use it for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193239480X
• ISBN13: 9781932394801
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Manning Publications
• Length: 566 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

ANT can do almost anything

This book is easy to read. It's not written like a reference book, but the contents are indexed well enough so that you can use it as one. With the help of the book, I wrote a customized task in Java which is used by my build script.

Everything you wanted to know about Ant and more

At over five hundred pages in eighteen chapters this book is a comprehensive reference on all aspects of Ant, from building scripts to compile, test, package, execute and distribute an application, to advanced topics like testing and deploying database oriented enterprise Java applications. All core Ant tasks and many contributed and third party tasks are covered in considerable detail: the discussion of alone extends over eight pages. Advanced topics include projects with multiple build files and writing your own Ant tasks in Java or using a JVM based scripting language. Ivy is covered in detail and comparisons made with Maven. In short this is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to master the many aspects of Ant to create flexible and effective build files.

Excellent reference so far

Being a general novice with Ant, I needed to get up to speed to amateur/expert level for my new job. So far its been a great reference getting in depth information about lesser used tasks in Ant. Since I work on a large scale project here, Chapter 10, Working with Big Projects has really been the most useful for me. Overall, I would say this book fits my needs and doesn't require me to buy any additional Ant books at this time. I would recommend it to others in similar situations.

More than just Ant

A 500+ page book about a build tool. I guess your initial reaction might be the same as mine. Why would we need so much pages to describe a build tool. Well, after reading "Ant in Action" I concluded, it doesn't need. The book just described much more than just Ant. The book consists of three parts. The first part is called "Learning Ant". This is basically the build tool part, which describes the basics of Ant and how to use it. Well actually, in part one it already goes a little further to also include unit testing and already some deployment related information. The second part is called "Applying Ant" and goes well beyond just describing Ant. Chapter 10 describes working in large projects. Chapter 11 talks about managing dependencies and introduces Ivy. Chapter 15 introduces continuous integration and introduces Luntbuild (not sure why the authors not chose to describe CruiseControl, which is absolutely the most used CI tool). Chapter 16 alone would already be a reason to get the book and it talks about automating deployment and introduces a tool called Smartfrog. The third parts is called "extending ant" and explains how you can extend ant, develop your own tasks and test them using AntUnit. It describes how ant is implemented so that you know how to extend it (and probably how to develop for it further). When I started my journey through this book, I was a simple Ant user. The authors showed me that there are so much things possible with Ant and also explored the world around Ant. After finishing the book, I felt I have learned so much and it certainly improved my build scripting abilities. An absolute must read.

The definitive guide to building Java systems

Ant in Action is essential reading for anyone who has to set up a Java build, or manage and maintain large projects. I've been waiting for this to leave the printers for a while - I was lucky enough to read a pre-release copy of Ant in Action, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It carefully walks through the setup for a basic build system, and evolves that to managing large scale projects, explaining as it goes how modern versions of Ant and its features (such as macrodef and import) work to handle larger and larger codebases. It's a hugely detailed, but well written book. The title doesn't do justice to the material covered. Ant in Action is also a catalog of best practices for building, testing and deploying Java systems - I don't think there's another book in print that provides the kind of information you can find here. Dependency management, source layout, testing, master builds, packaging, deployment, web development - it's all there.