Java Development with Ant

smarks writes "Java Development with Ant effectively shows the reader how Ant can be used as the foundation for the most complex Java software configuration solutions. The book is divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced sections, which makes it appropriate for a variety of audiences. The book has a comprehensive survey of tools that can be used with Ant such as JUnit, CheckStyle, Middlegen and XDoclet Even the experienced Ant user will find these sections helpful. Overall, Java Development with Ant is an excellent resource." Read on for the rest of Spencer's review. Java Development with Ant author Eric Hatcher, Steve Loughran pages 634 publisher Manning rating 8.5 reviewer Spencer Marks ISBN 1930110588 summary How to use Ant to meet all (or most of) your poject's software configuration needs

Pros:

• Excellent coverage of optional Ant tasks
• Good division of beginner, intermediate and advanced content
• Thorough discussion of how to use Ant to solve a variety of software configuration management situations
• Shows how to use Ant for tasks outside of typical configuration management roles such as the automated code generation of EJB and Application Server deployment descriptors
• Shows how Ant helps with a variety of software development methodologies including XP's suggested best practices of continual integration and JUnit testing
• Catalogs IDEs that integrate well with Ant including my personal favorite, Intellij's IDEA development environment

Cons:

• Some of the examples could have benefited from more detail. For example, the section on the PropertyFile task could have shown how to solve the problem of platform specific path separators in Java property files.
• At the time of this review, the book's accompanying website was a bit meager. For example, a comprehensive list of Ant on-line resources would have been helpful.

What the book offers

I consider myself an intermediate Ant user and when books on Ant first appeared I thought they would add little to the excellent free documentation and examples readily available. With its clean, straight forward syntax and structure, Ant has a low of cost of entry, and being rooted in Java and XML it is extremely flexible and extensible. I found Ant refreshingly easy to use as part of a configuration management system that included continual integration and a unit testing strategy. It was much better suited for Java development than the tool I previously used which was make. So when I agreed to do this review, I was skeptical that I would find the book useful. However, the book proved to be rich in valuable information that is well organized and clearly presented. Java Development with Ant, written by Erik Hatcher and Steve Loughran who are both committers to the Apache Ant project, is a great resource for anyone wishing to learn how to integrate Ant into his personal set of best practices for software configuration management solutions.

Coming to the book as a long time Ant user, I was glad to see that it offered material appropriate for others than just those approaching Ant for the first time. The book is divided into three sections each of which could probably find a niche as useful (and thinner) separate book: Learning Ant, Apply Ant, and Extending Ant. Only the first section of the book is devoted to first-time users, or those Learning Ant. The reminder of the book is about Ant in action. It covers an interesting variety of third-party Ant tasks, various ways of applying Ant to software development projects, and an in-depth section on how to extend Ant writing your own Java classes.

After a short but helpful introduction to the general topic of software configuration management, the first section, Learning Ant, launches into a thorough explanation of Ant's fundamental concepts and operation. JUnit test integration is treated as part of of the basic operation of Ant, which I was happy to see because unit testing should be a fundamental part of any software configuration management process.

Despite having used Ant on a number of projects since the summer 2000, at no point have I had to become truly expert with it in order to solve the wide range of software configuration problems I encountered. This is because Ant is easy to use. Typically, I figure out what I want the software configuration management to do, and then look for Ant examples that I can easily tweak to get the job done. I think it is a great credit to the Ant and its designers that I can do this successfully. Even though I've had this success with Ant, the introductory material filled in some of the gaps I had in my understanding of Ant's operation. For example, I was introduced to the PropertyFile taskdef which up until then had escaped my notice but which solved a problem for which I previously had a less elegant solution.

The most interesting part of the book was the second section that talked about a variety of Ant add on programs (called taskdefs) like Middlegen (an EJB descriptor tool) and XDoclet. XDoclet had been on the periphery of my radar for a while now, so I welcomed the book's thorough discussion of it in both a general and Ant specific sense. In addition there are helpful chapters devoted to using Ant as an aide to production deployment, web site generation including the compilation of JSP pages and the automatic generation of EJB descriptors. There are also chapters on working with Web Services using SOAP and a section on how Ant can be used as part of a continuous integration process complete with email notification. There is even a section on using Ant for Java projects that have a native code component. (Ant can be used to compile native code and the book shows how it can be helpful in dealing with the complexities surrounding JNI.) The book works well as a reference text. There's no need to read it from cover to cover in order for it to be extremely helpful.

The third part of the book also looks interesting, but it is intended for a more hardcore audience than myself. I've been fortunate to find ready made solutions for all the configuration management services I wanted to provide my clients. So, learning how to extend Ant has never been an issue. Every time I think I might have to develop my own answer, I find that someone else has already beaten me to it. Such is the nature of successful Open Source projects. However, I am glad this section exists, because I am sure at some point I will use it myself or refer a student or client to it.

The book even has some material on using Ant outside of the context of Java. Not having much experience with these technologies, I didn't pay close attention to these sections. (I am sure I'll be amused when I encounter my first .NET project that is using Ant for its configuration management solution).

In closing, if you are more than casually interested in software configuration management for Java projects then I recommend this book with enthusiasm. Beginners will be up and running with Ant in short order, while the book contains many interesting and useful nuggets for more experienced Ant users.

Ant on the web

• The Ant Project -- be sure to see their resources section.
• Ant FAQ at jguru.com (moderated by the book's co-author: Erik Hatcher)
• Ant forum at jguru (moderated by the book's co-author: Erik Hatcher)
• JUnit: A regression testing framework written by Erich Gamma and Kent Beck. It is used to implement unit tests in Java.
• CheckStyle: A development tool to help programmers write Java code that adheres to a coding standard.
• Middlegen:A general-purpose database-driven code generation engine.
• XDoclet: An extended Javadoc Doclet engine. It's a generic Java tool that lets you create custom Javadoc @tags and based on those @tags generate source code or other files (such as xml-ish deployment descriptors) using a template engine it provides.
• Intellij's IDEA "Develop with Pleasure" with this award winning Java IDE featuring full Ant integration that Marin Flower says: has succeeded in really moving forward the state of the art...
• The NetBeans and Eclipse Open Source IDEs also integrate nicely with Ant.

You can purchase Java Development with Ant from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

JUnit

[mr_gerbik]

I don't know about you guys, but all the fine Java ladies dig my JUnit.

-gerbik

Re:Ant is for wimps

[doomdog]

So now I'm modded down as Flamebait for dissing one of the "sacred cows" (open source software) of slashdot? Figures...

Speaking of conditional complilation.. JavaMake!

[ahrenritter]

Our company is doing a mixture of Java and C++ so we are using make. I came across a fantastic conditional compiler written by some developer at sun.. JavaMake It can be easily integrated with Ant and it evaluates the bytecode of the updated files to see what signatures have changed. It then recompiles anything using those signatures if they weren't changed as well. It works *wonderfully*. The only limitation is compile time constants. If you change the name or type of a constant, it has to recompile the whole project because the Java bytecode only has the substituted value, not a reference to the variable.

Check it out. It can save a *lot* of time.