Benefits of Using Ant

Many server-side Java developers have found Ant to be an extremely useful tool for accelerating the development cycle associated with J2EE applications. Ant contains many built-in functions that relieve the burden of repetitive development tasks. As described in the Ant documentation: "In theory, it is kind of like make without make's wrinkles." For more information about Ant, see the Apache Ant Project.

Ant Environment in Sun Java System Web Server

The following build targets are represented in the build.xml files that accompany the sample applications.
 

Target	Function
usage	Lists the available targets.
compile	Compiles all Java source code.
war	Assembles the WAR file in sample_dir/assemble/war/.
default (default)	Compiles all sources, builds stubs/skeletons, and assembles JAR and WAR files. This is the default target for all build.xml files shipped in the web server.
all	Builds both default and registers resources and deploys app.
deploy	Application deployment only. No resource registration.
undeploy	Removes the deployed sample from the web server.
clean	Removes appname/build/ and appname/assemble/ content.
list_resource_common	Lists the available resources.
list_apps	Lists the available applications.
create_jdbc_resource_common	Creates a jdbc datasource.
create_auth_realm_common	Creates an auth realm element.
set_default_auth_realm_name_common	Sets the default auth realm name element.
delete_default_auth_realm_name_common	Deletes the default auth realm name element.
create_custom_resource_common	Creates a custom resource.
create_external_resource_common	Creates an external resource.
create_javamail_resource_common	Creates a javamail resource.
set_jvm_classpath_prefix_common	Appends the path to the jvm classpath prefix.
set_jvm_classpath_suffix_common	Appends the path to the jvm classpath suffix.
set_jvm_options_common	Sets the jvm options.
delete_resource_common	Deletes a resource.

Using the Build Facility

To use the Ant tool to compile and reassemble the sample applications, you must ensure that the ANT_HOME/bin directory is in your environment's path, and that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the directory in which your JDK is installed.

On UNIX platforms, you must add the ANT_HOME/bin directory to your PATH environment variable.

On Windows platforms, after installation of the web server, you must set the System path by adding ANT_HOME\bin to the user's PATH environment variable.

2. Compiling and Assembling a Sample Application

Using the jdbc-simple application sample as an example, execute several of the build targets:

a. Change to the jdbc/simple sample directory:

# cd install_root/samples/java/webapps/jdbc/simple/src

b. Execute the compile target to compile the Java sources:

# ant compile

c. Execute the war target to assemble the J2EE module files and the WAR file:

# ant war

Alternatively, you could accomplish all of these tasks by simply executing either the default or all targets:

# ant default

Because the default build target is default, you could execute ant without arguments to rebuild the entire application:

# ant

3. Additional Build Examples

The following samples demonstrate how you can use the build facility to quickly accomplish recurring development and deployment tasks.

• Build everything, then deploy the application (the most frequently used approach):
  
  # ant default (or simply: ant)
  # ant deploy
  
  
• Build everything, then deploy the application:
  
  # ant all