Apache Ant Reviews & Product Details

ANT is very simple to use and install. You download a zip and unzip it to a folder. I generally do c:\tools\ant. Add it to your path and you are ready to use ant to build Java programs. Apache's ANT is the oldest of the modern build tools and it lacks some of the new features that Maven has.

That being said, it's simple, fast and works on every platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ANT is old and does not automatically get remote repositories. Maven, which is basically's ANT's replacement has a way to keep your dependencies autodownloaded and centrally managed.

ANT also uses pretty heavy XML, which allows for scripting, but is very verbose. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can write complex build process.

You can easily invoke the targets using simple commands.

Very easy to install and take less time.

You can write your own ant targets if you know xml.

Easy to ad support for legacy builds.

open source software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It doesn't have dependency management.

Writing own ant targets are tricky sometimes.

scripts are not reusable, in maven we can create our own plugins.

We need to manually write build scripting.

Everybody is moving to maven so we can't reply on this completely. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's platform independent and installation is very easy.

It's very easy to,learn and implement.

It also allows integration of apache ivy for dependency management.

We can have complete control over build process.

It makes it very easy to define tasks that we can then execute with a few commands through the terminal.

You can write very complex build process using this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's XML configuration is complex. Also the xml file size can grow very big as project grows.

But it's no longer the standard, and many projects are converted to maven.

We need to manually copy the jar files lib as it doen't manage dependencies. It's very painful for the developer. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Apache ant is a great tool for front end development. I don't know anyone who uses Ant for Java related worked any more as Maven is much more feature packed and adopted now. Ant is a bit old school but works great for front end development. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

With all of the new technologies coming out Apache ant in my opinion has become pretty obsolete. Even for front end developers they will opt to use Grunt or Gulp instead of something like Ant. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. Simple to use

2. Easy to add support for legacy builds.

3. High Performance

4. To be able to compile large files in a relatively short time Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. Its no longer the standard, and many projects which are mavenized are much easier to use via maven than downloading the jar and getting it into your lib. then doing wire up via ant.

2. every build requires more setup and configuration, and generally on every machine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It works on any platform, WOProject-Ant[5] is just one of many examples of a task extension written for Ant. These extensions are put to use by copying their jar files into ant's lib directory. Once this is done, these extension tasks can be invoked directly in the typical build.xml file. The WOProject extensions allow WebObjects developers to use ant in building their frameworks and applications, instead of using Apple's Xcode suite.

Antcontrib[6] provides a collection of tasks such as conditional statements and operations on properties as well as other useful tasks.[7]

Ant-contrib.unkrig.de[8] implements tasks and types for networking, Swing user interfaces, JSON processing and other.

Other task extensions exist for Perforce, .Net, EJB, and filesystem manipulations, just to name a few.[9]

Below is listed a sample build.xml file for a simple Java "Hello, world" application. It defines four targets - clean, clobber, compile and jar, each of which has an associated description. The jar target lists the compile target as a dependency. This tells Ant that before it can start the jar target it must first complete the compile target. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Can't create password protect excel file.writeProtectWorkbook method not work. . . . .

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In the early to mid 2000's Ant was where it's at. It had so much promise and helped me automate builds for Java Apps for years. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's old and it's style is very old. There is no dependency management. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Fit well with Java projects. It runs well with different systems and has a decent example sets Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Old and seems unmaintained. It's difficult to write large tasks Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Automatize the build process;

- OS indipendent scripting;

- permits to enstablish a build process also when there isn't any. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Verbosity on simple tasks;

- Issues during build can be tricky to spot due a lot of exception wrapping. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Can be simple if you know what you want. You have complete control over how everything works Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No system to automatically include dependencies. Sometimes writing the build configuration can take alot of time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.