Friday, June 29, 2012

How to Install Apache Ant


Its really simple.
1. Make sure you have java environment installed in your system.
2. Download Ant binary distribution form here.
3. Uncompress the file downloaded.
4. Set the environment variables.
         Click new button to add new environment variable. Type "ANT_HOME" as the variable name and give the path of the directory where you uncompress Ant as the value. Then edit the path variable. For Windows add %ANT_HOME%/bin and for Linux add ${ANT_HOME}/bin to the value value of the path variable. At the end the value of the path variable should be shown like this. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\bin ; %ANT_HOME%/bin.
5. Click OK and save all the changes.

Now your are ready to use Apache Ant.
You can make sure that Ant is installed correctly by executing the command 
ant -version in command prompt. If it is installed correctly it should show the version information of Ant distribution. 

Friday, June 22, 2012

Apache Ant - Java-Based Build Tool

                 

                  Apache Ant is a powerful Java-based build tool which automates the building process of a project. Mainly Ant is used to build Java applications. But It supports many program application like C, C++, Python etc. Ant can be used to many purposes. If we want to get the results of several programs which is written and executed in different languages we can use ant to do that.
                 We can configure Ant project by using "build.xml". "build.xml" is normal xml file. There we can define all the tasks, properties and variable which are used in the build process. Ant has lost of free defined tasks. Also We can define our own task.
                  After preparing the build.xml file we can simply execute "ant" command in command prompt of terminal. Then it builds the project.
                  Ant support both Windows and Linux platforms. You cant download the binary distribution of Ant form here. For more information you can refer the Apache Ant Project Site.
I hope to bring you series of post about Apache Ant.