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(1) Make sure there is a Copyright notice on all visible files. (2) Make sure all years in which the file has been modified are listed. (3) Make sure the format is consistent, i.e. separate consecutive years with a dash, not a comma. When Stephane changed starteam.html it has been 2001 in France but 2002 in Australia - does that mean we add 2002 to the Copyright line or not? ;-) git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ant/core/trunk@270652 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68
55 lines
2.2 KiB
HTML
55 lines
2.2 KiB
HTML
<html>
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<head>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
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<title>Apache Ant User Manual</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1><a name="introduction">Introduction</a></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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<i>make</i>, without <i>make</i>'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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<i>make</i>,
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<i>gnumake</i>,
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<i>nmake</i>,
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<i>jam</i>,
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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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<nobr><code>`find . -name foo -exec rm {}`</code></nobr>, 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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<exec> 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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<hr>
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<p align="center">Copyright © 2001 Apache Software Foundation. All rights
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Reserved.</p>
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</body>
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</html>
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