Ant in Action (Manning) (Paperback)

by Steve Loughran (Author), Erik Hatcher (Author)
Key Phrases: glob mapper, own build file, single build file, Enterprise Java, Average Rate, Apache Cactus (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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 test-driven Java application development. Ant itself is moving to v1.7, a major revision, at the end of 2006 so the timing for the book is right. A single application of increasing complexity, followed throughout the book, shows how an application evolves and how to handle the problems of building and testing. Reviewers have praised the book's coverage of large-projects, Ant's advanced features, and the details and depth of the discussion-all unavailable elsewhere.

This is a major revision with the second half of the book completely new, including:

How to Manage Big projects

Library management

Enterprise Java

Continuous integration

Deployment

Writing new Ant tasks and datatypes

About the Author
Steve Loughran has been an active user and developer of Ant since the year 2000, a committer on the project since 2001, and a member of the Apache Software Foundation since 2004. He regularly lectures on the problems of big-system builds, distributed testing, and deployment. He is a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Bristol, UK.

Erik Hatcher is an active Ant project developer and maintains jGuru's Ant FAQ and Forum. Erik has written articles for WebReview.com, IBM developerWorks, and JavaPro. His other open-source efforts currently include Lucene, XDoclet, and his own blogger, BlogScene. He is also the co-author of Manning's "Lucene in Action". Erik lives in Charlottesville, VA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; 2 edition (July 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193239480X
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394801
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #167,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than just Ant, August 5, 2007

By	Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive guide to building Java systems, July 14, 2007

By	Bill de Hora "dehora" (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you wanted to know about Ant and more, March 16, 2009

By	P. Cherryl (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 <copy> 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.