Ant in Action: Covers Ant 1.7 (Manning) (Paperback)

~ (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

Loughran designs and builds production Web Services using Java and Ant. Prior to this, he was a research scientist in Hewlett Packard Laboratories in England.

Erik Hatcher, one of the original Lucene in Action authors, is a committer on the Ant, Lucene, and Tapestry open-source projects, and coauthor of Manning's award-winning Java Development with Ant.

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: #132,684 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 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.

9 of 9 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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best and most complete book on Apache Ant, August 16, 2007

By	Kevin A. Lee "The Buildmeister" (Aylesbury, Bucks, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a build tool, Apache Ant has been in existence for quite a while now and remains the number one Java build scripting tool. A large number of books have been written on its implementation - both good and unfortunately bad - and here is a brand new one which covers Ant 1.7.

This book is a retitled second edition of Java Development with Ant by the same authors but is not just a minor update - the back cover quotes 50% new content and I can well believe it. Personally, I have implemented lots of build processes using Ant and even written a book on its implementation myself. I therefore thought I knew most things about the tool - however I was pleasantly surprised that I still managed to learn some new things from this book.

In general I don't really like books over 250-300 pages - and this one stretches over 560 pages. Although there is probably some content that could have been left out, there are also gems such as Managing Dependencies with Apache Ivy (although I prefer the Ant tasks for Maven), Working with XML and Automating Deployment using a tool called SmartFrog. For me these chapters made the purchase of the book worthwhile.

If you are new or have limited experience of Ant then you should add an extra star to my rating. I believe this is probably the most complete book at taking you from an Ant novice to expert, in as short a time as possible.

It would have been nice to see some more examples of how Ant can be integrated into automated build processes, and rather strangely the book uses Luntbuild as an example rather that the more popular CruiseControl tool. Also it would have been nice to see how Ant can work alongside commercial tools such as the Build Forge build/release framework, application servers such as Weblogic or WebSphere and deployment tools developed by the likes of Tivoli or Microsoft. On the whole however, these are relatively minor complaints.

In summary, if you are new to Ant then buy this book now. If you are an experienced Ant user then well, still buy this book!