Ant Tool(Build.xml File)

Build.xml File

          Ant is a build tool that means the main aim of Ant tool is to automation Java Project process. By default ant uses build.xml file for writing build script. It is an XML file. It is a standard file name followed by everyone. It is not mandatory. We can use any filename like banking.xml, bank-build.xml etc, we can use ant tool to do the following things

o  Create directories

o  Delete directories

o  Copy files from one directory to another directory

o  Create new files

o  Compile and run java files

o  Create a war file

o  Create jar file

o  Create an ear file

o  Deploy war or ear into a server etc.

Build.xml File Architecture

Content of build.xml file:

Each Java project contains one or more build script files. Each script file contains a project. Default build file name is ‘build.xml’, but we can use any name. Ant’s build files are written in XML.

Project:

We can represent this project by using <project> element and it contains some attributes like attribute “name” is use to specify project name etc.

That means build.xml contains <project> as root element.

Example:-

<project name = “bank”….>

</project>

The <project> tag has three attributes:

§  Name

§  Default

§  Basedir

<project> attributes description:

o  The name attribute gives the project name.

o  The default attribute refers to a target name within the build file. If you run Ant without               Specifying a target on the command line, Ant executes the default target. If the default target. If the default target doesn't exist, Ant returns an error.

o  The basedir attribute defines the root directory of a project. Typically, it is “.”, the directory you're in when you run Ant. However, basedir can also define different points of reference.

          Target:

                   Each<project> contains a set of targets. At least one target is mandatory.

          We can represent this target using <target> element just like <project>, each target contains one name. We can represent this target name using “name” attribute. We should provide unique target names within one build script file