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67 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
67 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
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<!--
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Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
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contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
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this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
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The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
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(the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
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the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
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https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
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distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
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WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
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See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
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limitations under the License.
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-->
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheets/style.css">
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<title>Apache Ant User Manual—Introduction</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1 id="introduction">Introduction</h1>
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<p>Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like
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<em>make</em>, without <em>make</em>'s wrinkles.</p>
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<h3>Why?</h3>
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<p>Why another build tool when there is already
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<em>make</em>,
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<em>gnumake</em>,
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<em>nmake</em>,
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<em>jam</em>,
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and
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others? Because all those tools have limitations that Ant's original author
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couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms.
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Make-like
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tools are inherently shell-based: they evaluate a set of dependencies,
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then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a shell.
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This means that you
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can easily extend these tools by using or writing any program for the OS that
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you are working on; however, this also means that you limit yourself to the OS,
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or at least the OS type, such as Unix, that you are working on.</p>
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<p>Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any
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time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing
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because I have a space in front of my tab?!!" said the original author of
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Ant way too many times. Tools like Jam took care of this to a great degree, but
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still have yet another format to use and remember.</p>
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<p>Ant is different. Instead of a model where it is extended with shell-based
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commands, Ant is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell commands,
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the configuration files are XML-based, calling out a target tree where various
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tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object that implements a particular
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Task interface.</p>
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<p>Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent in being
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able to construct a shell command such as
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<code>`find . -name foo -exec rm {}`</code>, but it
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gives you the ability to be cross-platform—to work anywhere and
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everywhere. And
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hey, if you really need to execute a shell command, Ant has an
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<code><exec></code> task that
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allows different commands to be executed based on the OS it is executing
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on.</p>
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</body>
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</html>
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