Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition By Steve Holzner ............................................... Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: April 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00609-8 Pages: 334 Table of Contents | Index | Errata As the most widely used tool for cross-platform development, Ant has undergone a number of important changes in its functionality and use since its launch. Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition has been reworked to reflect these changes for Java developers everywhere. Topics covered include everything from downloading and installing, to using Ant to build Web applications, to using Ant to test code. Ant: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition By Steve Holzner ............................................... Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: April 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00609-8 Pages: 334 Table of Contents | Index | Errata Copyright Preface What's Inside Conventions Used in This Book What You'll Need Using Code Examples We'd Like to Hear from You Chapter 1. Getting Started Section 1.1. Ant's Origins Section 1.2. Getting Ant Section 1.3. Ant at Work Section 1.4. Anatomy of a Build File Section 1.5. Running Ant Chapter 2. Using Properties and Types Section 2.1. Using Properties to Control Tasks Section 2.2. Using Property Files Section 2.3. Handling Data Using Types Chapter 3. Building Java Code Section 3.1. Compiling Code Section 3.2. Getting Input from the User Section 3.3. Calling Other Ant Tasks Section 3.4. Importing Other Build Files Section 3.5. Documenting Code Section 3.6. Creating JAR Files Section 3.7. Setting Build Numbers Section 3.8. Setting Timestamps Chapter 4. Deploying Builds Section 4.1. Packaging Applications for Deployment Section 4.2. Preparing to Deploy Section 4.3. Deploying Applications Section 4.4. Scheduling Automatic Builds Chapter 5. Testing Builds with JUnit Section 5.1. Using JUnit Section 5.2. Running Test Cases Section 5.3. Testing in Batches Section 5.4. Running the Build File Section 5.5. Extending JUnit Chapter 6. Getting Source Code from CVS Repositories Section 6.1. Source Control and Ant Section 6.2. Logging In Section 6.3. Working with the Server Section 6.4. Getting Version Data Section 6.5. Creating Change Logs Section 6.6. Finding Changes Between Versions Section 6.7. Creating Patches Chapter 7. Executing External Programs Section 7.1. Executing Java Code Section 7.2. Executing External Programs Section 7.3. Performing Batch Execution Section 7.4. Multithreading Tasks Section 7.5. Setting Execution Order Chapter 8. Developing for the Web Section 8.1. Creating WAR Archives Section 8.2. Creating CAB Files Section 8.3. Creating Simple Web Deployment Section 8.4. Deploying with SCP Section 8.5. Deploying to Tomcat Section 8.6. Deploying to Tomcat Section 8.7. Compiling JSPs Section 8.8. Deploying to EJB Containers Chapter 9. XML and XDoclet Section 9.1. Validating XML Documents Section 9.2. Loading Properties from XML Files Section 9.3. Creating Ant Task DTDs Section 9.4. Transforming XML Using XSLT Section 9.5. Using XDoclet Section 9.6. Developing Enterprise JavaBeans Chapter 10. Optional Tasks Section 10.1. Using Sound Section 10.2. Creating Splash Screens Section 10.3. Subtituting Text Using Regular Expressions Section 10.4. Handling Dependencies Chapter 11. Integrating Ant with Eclipse Section 11.1. Introducing Eclipse Section 11.2. Running Ant Build Files Section 11.3. Using a Different Version of Ant Section 11.4. Using the Ant View Chapter 12. Extending Ant Section 12.1. Creating a Simple Custom Ant Task Section 12.2. Extending the Task Class Section 12.3. Creating Custom Listeners Section 12.4. Creating Custom Loggers Section 12.5. Creating Custom Filters Section 12.6. Creating Custom Selectors Section 12.7. Creating New Types Colophon Index Copyright © 2005 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O'Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safari.oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 [email protected] . Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O'Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O'Reilly Media, Inc. Ant: The Definitive Guide, the image of a horned lizard, and related trade dress are trademarks of O'Reilly Media, Inc. Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., in the United States and other countries. O'Reilly Media, Inc. is independent of Sun Microsystems. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O'Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. Preface Welcome to Ant, today's premiere build tool. Ant is an extraordinary tool, and it fills a long-standing need among developers. No longer do you have to try to remember the 50 steps to build your project and make sure you do them in the right order or try to get finicky makefiles just right. Now you've got a true build tool that's genuinely easy to work withand outstandingly powerful. If you've never used Ant, you're in for a treat. We're going to push the envelope in this book, working from the basics through the advanced, doing nearly everything that Ant can do. This book was designed to open up Ant and make it more accessible than any other book on the subject. It's a programmer-to-programmer book, written to make you an Ant pro without wasting time. If you're a programmer, this book is written to give you exactly what you want to see, which is the good stuff and only the good stuff. There's as much Ant crammed into this book as you need to master the topic, and mastering Ant is the goal. What's Inside From cover to cover, this book is pure Ant, covering hundreds of topics and techniques. We start from the most basic Java© development up to extending Ant yourself; it's all here. Here are a few of the topics in this book: Getting and installing Ant Creating build files Running a build Handling build failures Specifying build targets Using property files Handling datatypes and properties Handling filesets Using selectors, filtersets, and filter chains Working with mappers Creating conditional targets Packaging applications Moving, copying, and deleting files Building documentation Creating JAR files Deploying applications Using FTP Handling remote deployment Getting and installing JUnit Using JUnit assertions Creating a test case Running a test case Using CVS and Ant Accessing CVS Initializing CVS Running external programs and continuous integration Running code in a new JVM Calling other programs Setting environment variables Scheduling Ant builds automatically Scheduling builds in Unix and Windows Using scripting Using AntHill Creating email notifications Working with XDoclet and XML Creating XML build logs Handling web development Compiling JSP pages Using Ant's EJB tasks Using XDoclet for EJB development Connecting Ant to Eclipse Configuring Ant in Eclipse Writing Ant tasks Handling errors Writing custom filters and selectors Writing custom Ant loggers and listeners Here's an overview, chapter by chapter: Chapter 1 This chapter is all about the basics, including all the details on how to create Ant build files and how to run them. Chapter 2, Using Properties and Types This chapter is about two central Ant topics: properties and types. Properties let you configure Ant tasks, and types hold data used by tasks. Chapter 3, Building Java Code This chapter focuses on the Java build process, from compiling Java code with thejavac task through compressing and packaging the results with tasks such as jar. Chapter 4, Deploying Builds This chapter covers tasks to package applications for deployments such as tar, gzip, and zip; tasks to prepare directories for deployment such as delete and mkdir; and tasks to deploy applications such as copy and move for local and network deployment, as well as ftp, telent, sshexec, and mail for remote deployment. Chapter 5, Testing Builds With JUnit It doesn't make much sense to deploy code that has been broken by a new build. This chapter using the JUnit framework with Ant, during which you can run tests on your code and deploy it if it satisfies those tests. Chapter 6, Getting Source Code from CVS Repositories There's a lot of support built in for Concurrent Version System (CVS) in Ant, and this chapter is all about making code sharing in teams with CVS happen. Chapter 7, Executing External Programs Part of the build process involves testing what you've built, and an obvious way of doing that is to run the results of a build. Doing so from Ant involves using the major tasks in this chapter: java, exec, and apply. Chapter 8, Developing for the Web This chapter covers the tasks specifically designed for packaging web applications, such aswar , cab, ear, and jspc, and for deploying them, such as get, serverdeploy, and scp. I'll also cover the custom Ant tasks targeted to specific servers such as deploy, reload, and undeploy. Chapter 9, XML and XDoclet You can validate XML documents using XML DTDs and schema using thexmlvalidate task. You can read properties from an XML document using xmlproperty.