Ant: The Definitive Guide

Jesse Tilly, O'Reilly

ISBN:0596001843, Edition: 1, 2002-05-15

Price: $34.95

Table of Contents

Dedication ~ 1

Foreword ~ 2

Preface ~ 5
Structure of This Book ~ 5
Audience ~ 7
What You Should Know ~ 7
Which Platform and Version ~ 7
Conventions Used in This book ~ 7
Comments and Questions ~ 8
Acknowledgments ~ 9

Chapter 1. Ant Jumpstart ~ 10
1.1 Files and Directories ~ 10
1.2 The Ant Buildfile ~ 11
1.3 Running Ant ~ 13
1.4 Ant Command-Line Reference ~ 15
1.5 Buildfile Outline ~ 17
1.6 Learning More ~ 17

Chapter 2. Installation and Configuration ~ 18
2.1 The Distribution ~ 18
2.2 Installation ~ 18
2.3 Configuration ~ 25

Chapter 3. The Buildfile ~ 28
3.1 Why XML? ~ 28
3.2 Ant Building Blocks ~ 29
3.3 An Example Project and Buildfile ~ 33
3.4 The Buildfile Execution Process ~ 45
3.5 AINASL: Ant Is Not a Scripting Language ~ 54
3.6 Buildfile Authoring Issues ~ 56

Chapter 4. Ant DataTypes ~ 58
4.1 DataTypes Defined ~ 59
4.2 XML Attribute Conventions ~ 59
4.3 Argument DataType ~ 61
4.4 Environment DataType ~ 64
4.5 FileList DataType ~ 66
4.6 FileSet DataType ~ 67
4.7 PatternSet DataType ~ 70
4.8 FilterSet DataType ~ 72
4.9 Path DataType ~ 74
4.10 Mapper DataType ~ 76

Chapter 5. User-Written Tasks ~ 80
5.1 The Need for Custom Tasks ~ 80
5.2 Ant's Task Model ~ 81
5.3 The Task Life Cycle ~ 89
5.4 An Example Through Analysis: The jar Task ~ 92
5.5 Miscellaneous Task Topics ~ 106

Chapter 6. User-Written Listeners ~ 109
6.1 The BuildEvent Class ~ 109
6.2 The BuildListener Interface ~ 111
6.3 An Example: XmlLogger ~ 113
6.4 The Parallel Problem ~ 115

Chapter 7. Core Tasks ~ 117
7.1 Task Summary ~ 117
7.2 Common Types and Attributes ~ 119
7.3 Project and Target ~ 121
7.4 Core Task Reference ~ 124

Chapter 8. Optional Tasks ~ 212
8.1 Task Summary ~ 212
8.2 Optional Task Reference ~ 213

Appendix A. The Future of Ant ~ 300
A.1 Ant2 ~ 300
A.2 Ant1 RIP 2002? ~ 301

Appendix B. Ant Solutions ~ 302
B.1 Testing Library Availability ~ 302
B.2 Cleaning Up Does More Than Keep Things Neat ~ 303
B.3 Using Ant to Consolidate Libraries ~ 303
B.4 Documenting the Buildfile's Targets ~ 305
B.5 Setting Properties Outside of the Buildfile ~ 305
B.6 Using pathconvert ~ 306
B.7 Usage Statements ~ 307
B.8 Forking Processes ~ 308
B.9 Using Cascading Projects and Buildfiles ~ 309

Colophon ~ 312