diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'build/tools/jakarta-ant-1.5.1/README')
| -rw-r--r-- | build/tools/jakarta-ant-1.5.1/README | 70 | 
1 files changed, 70 insertions, 0 deletions
| diff --git a/build/tools/jakarta-ant-1.5.1/README b/build/tools/jakarta-ant-1.5.1/README new file mode 100644 index 000000000..311e96cac --- /dev/null +++ b/build/tools/jakarta-ant-1.5.1/README @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +
 +                                 A     N     T
 + 
 +
 +  What is it? 
 +  -----------
 +  
 +  Ant is a Java based build tool. In theory it is kind of like "make" 
 +  without makes wrinkles and with the full portability of pure java code.
 +
 +  
 +  Why?
 +  ----
 +  
 +  Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam, 
 +  and others? Because all of those tools have limitations that its original 
 +  author couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms. 
 +  
 +  Make-like tools are inherently shell based. They evaluate a set of 
 +  dependencies and then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a 
 +  shell. This means that you can easily extend these tools by using or writing 
 +  any program for the OS that you are working on. However, this also means that 
 +  you limit yourself to the OS, or at least the OS type such as Unix, that you 
 +  are working on.
 +  
 +  Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any 
 +  time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing 
 +  because I have a space in front of my tab!!!" said the original author of Ant 
 +  way too many times. Tools like Jam took care of this to a great degree, but 
 +  still use yet another format to use and remember.
 +  
 +  Ant is different. Instead a model where it is extended with shell based 
 +  commands, it is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell 
 +  commands, the configuration files are XML based calling out a target tree 
 +  where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object which 
 +  implements a particular Task interface.
 +  
 +  Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent by being 
 +  able to construct a shell command such as `find . -name foo -exec rm {}` but 
 +  it gives you the ability to be cross platform. To work anywhere and 
 +  everywhere. And hey, if you really need to execute a shell command, Ant has 
 +  an exec rule that allows different commands to be executed based on the OS 
 +  that it is executing on.
 +
 +  The Latest Version
 +  ------------------
 +
 +  Details of the latest version can be found on the Apache Jakarta
 +  Project web site <http://jakarta.apache.org/>.
 +
 +
 +  Documentation
 +  -------------
 +
 +  Documentation is available in HTML format, in the docs/ directory.
 +  For information about building and installing Ant, see
 +  docs/manual/index.html
 +
 +
 +  Licensing
 +  ---------
 +
 +  This software is licensed under the terms you may find in the file 
 +  named "LICENSE" in this directory.
 +  
 +
 +  Thanks for using Ant.
 +
 +                                          The Apache Jakarta Project
 +                                         <http://jakarta.apache.org/>
 | 
