Java Development with Ant (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A great resource . . . learn how to integrate Ant into [a] personal set of best practices for software configuration management solutions." -- slashdot.org

"Erik and Steve give you the answers to questions you didn't even know you have." -- Ted Neward, .NET & Java author and instructor

"Required reading for all Java developers . . . You will only need one Ant book if you buy this one." -- About.com Java Guide

"This should be required reading for all Java developers." -- Denver Java Users Group

"[A] must read for everyone using Ant in the development/build/deploy process for Java applications." -- Werner Ramaeker's Weblog

"[This] is essential for anyone serious about actually shipping Java applications. I wish I could say I wrote it." -- Stuart Halloway, chief technical officer, DevelopMentor, and author, Component Development for the Java Platform

Product Description

The most widely used build tool for Java projects, Ant is cross-platform, extensible, simple, and fast. It scales from small personal projects to large, multi-team J2EE projects. And, most importantly, it's easy to learn. Java Development with Ant systematically explores what Ant can do and how to apply it to your project. Whether you are new to Ant or an experienced user, this book will show you powerful and creative uses for Ant. The book emphasizes basic concepts you need to know to effectively use Ant starting with Ant's XML-driven build process. It leads you step-by-step through everything you need to know to compile, test, package, and deploy an application. It then guides you through the maze of more complex situations common in larger projects such as enterprise Java applications and Web Services. With this book you will gain access to a powerful tool to automatically build, test and deploy your Java software, no matter how simple or complex it might be.

What's inside:

* The new Ant 1.5 features

* Ant's datatypes and property handling

* JUnit testing and reporting

* Continuous integration techniques

* XDoclet for attribute-oriented programming

* EJB generation, building, and packaging

* Writing and testing native code

* Building Web Services with Apache Axis

* Deploying your system to multiple remote servers

* Using and writing

* Loggers

* Listeners

* Selectors

* Custom tasks

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930110588
• ISBN-13: 978-1930110588
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #292,610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It is more about Ant than about what you can do with it..., July 23, 2003

By	Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

Very good programmers are often terrible authors.. as you will find out from both this book and the manning book on Struts. Having been written by Ant contributors and "junkies" it tends to be more of an "ant treatise" than a tutorial on how to use
it in the most common and useful situations. So buy it if you want a long and wordy description of of ant and all its quirks,
but you want lots of clean, short, to-the-point, easy to follow
examples you might get disappointed here. Also, be aware that this book is 500 pages long, and if learning routine web and business programming can be boring, wading through 500 pages about how to compile package deploy and test that code is boring beyond belief!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my top 5 Java books, January 3, 2006

By	Frank J. Kelly "Java Architect" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ant is a great tool that lets you pretty much automate any process- whether Java build-related or not. This book is then THE one-and-only book to buy - it serves as a tutorial AND a reference. The author's breadth of knowledge on Ant is amazing and the examples he presents are wonderful.

The key areas I found the book very helpful on were
1) JUnit integration & report creation (using XDoclet /JUnitReport)
2) Deployment-related activities
3) Breaking out commonly used Ant targets for reuse

But there is so much more - my edition has been well thumbed
and has many yellow post-it notes for quick lookup.

Based on what I've learned in this book I've been able to quickly and easily integrate the following components into my build process
1) Checkstyle (syntax checker)
2) PMD ("bad practice" checker)
3) JUnit & Clover (code coverage)
4) JDepend (Class interdependcy reporting)
5) Javadoc
6) An automated nightly build of the code and deployment to WebSphere

I can't say enough about this book - but I would be lost without it and thus am loathe to lend it. If you use Ant or WANT to use Ant then buy this book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Ant AND great for other obscure utilities, January 18, 2003

By A Customer

I never would have known about such time savers as Middlegen if I hadn't read this book.

It has better documentation on some of these other utilities than do the utilities themselves. For example, read this book instead of the CruiseControl documentation, if you need CruiseControl on your project.

It's also very well-written and organized, with just the right amount of examples - no tedious 10-page listings.

Much better than the O'Reilly lizard book. What's up with the lizard anyway? They had a ready-made animal cover in Ant, and they ignored it.