welcome.html - ant - Git at Google

 <html>
 <head>
 <title>Welcome to Ant1.5</title>
 </head>
 <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
 <h1>Welcome to Ant1.5</h1>
 Hello, and welcome to Ant1.5
 <p>
 For new users to Ant, welcome to a new way to build your software.
 <p>
 For veteran Ant users, its been, what nine months since Ant 1.4.1
 shipped, and we've been as busy enhancing it as you've been using it.
 <p>

 We know you've been using Ant, not just from the all the bug reports we
 see, but from the awards we've been getting from JavaWorld and SD Magazine
 and from the fact that it is now clearly a mainstream product. Every quality IDE,
 from the Open Source projects: Emacs, NetBeans, Eclipse, JEdit, to the
 commercial offerings such as IntelliJ IDEA and JBuilder now have high
 quality Ant integration  either built in or available as a
 download. And they do that not just because it improves their products,
 giving users the best of both worlds -great editors and a great build
 process, but because Java developers are starting to expect Ant (and
 JUnit) everywhere.
 <p>
 Even in mid-2001, if you said you were using Ant in your project, people
 would stare at you. Now, as long as you are talking with Java developers
 and not management or your family and friends, people will nod, shrug
 and maybe ask you questions about build file and Ant configurations. The good
 news: Ant 1.5 includes more helpful error messages and a new
 <tt>-diagnostics</tt> command to look at your Ant installation and help work out why
 things arent working.
 <p>
 Now, when you tell people you work on Ant in your spare time,
 people used to give you very funny stares; now they ask you about how to
 set up automated build processes, or deploy to some random app server.
 The good news: Ant 1.5 makes it easier to answer those questions.

 The other sign of mainstream is that there are also books on the
 subject, first Java Tools for Extreme Programming, then Ant: The
 Definitive Guide, and the first Ant1.5 book, Java Development with Ant,
 due to ship at the end of the month. (Steve says: I prefer the one with
 my name on the cover as co-author, but I'm biased).
 As usual, the manual has improved too:
 regardless of whether you need a book to work with Ant or not, you need
 that on-line documentation. And as usual, any extra contributions to the
 docs are welcome indeed.
 <p>
 Ant has also influenced how projects are built. Now when you download
 any open source project, or work with a closed source team, you expect
 to see a file called build.xml there. Equally important, you expect that
 build file to compile and run a set of tests using JUnit or a derivative
 thereof; if they are missing, you worry.
 <p>
 Together, Ant and JUnit have transformed the mainstream process for
 building and deploying Java projects. And that's pretty profound, when
 you think about it. What is equally impressive is that this was all done
 as a co-operative effort. Nobody works on Ant full-time; everybody uses
 it to solve their problems, to address their build crises and generally
 get something done in a hurry. It just so happens that the architectural
 model of Java classes bound via introspection to the XML build file
 makes it easy for people to add new tasks, extend existing ones and
 generally ease their way into developing and extending Ant. It is the
 users that have helped Ant become the success it is today, and will keep
 it that way tomorrow.
 <p>
 <h2>What has changed</h2>
 <p>
 So, what is new in Ant1.5? Lots of stuff. You will have to look at the
 <a href="WHATSNEW">whatsnew</a> file to see, but basically the changes
 fall into a number of categories
 <ol>
 <li>Bug fixes. We know, some things were broken in 1.4. In ant1.5 we
 have moved the bugs, fixing the ones we could, and no doubt adding
 different ones. Hopefully the total bug count has decreased.
 <li>Scalability. Changes in &lt;ant&gt; and a few other tasks should
 make it easier to write large, scalable build files.
 <li>Deployment. Take a look at the new &lt;serverdeploy&gt; task, add support
 for your server if it isnt there. Tomcat 4.1 has its own deployment
 tasks incidentally -fetch them from the tomcat pages.
 <li>Ease of use. We have added new attributes to make the archive tasks
 consistent with each other, new error messages for common problems (you
 get a screenful of help when a task wont instantiate, for example), and
 generally try and be helpful. As usual, we will accept contributions to
 the documentation or the code for even more helpfulness. Hey, in ant1.5
 you dont need to double escape the $ sign to preserve it in a string!
 <li>Java 1.4 support. We build and test fine on Java 1.4, and have the
 extensions to javac needed to build code with assertions in. We should
 point out that we have more work to do in this area: if someone wants to
 write an &lt;assertionset&gt; datatype to give users control of which assertions
 to enable, and patch this in to things like the &lt;junit&gt; and
 &lt;java&gt; tasks, things would get very interesting.
 <li>Continuous builds. Automated build tools are becoming more widely
 used; fork options on &lt;javac&gt; and &lt;javadoc&gt; are there to
 stop memory use growth on a continuous process.
 <li>New platforms: MacOS X for owners of those cute little laptops,
 Novell Netware servers, and even z/OS and OS/390 for mainframe
 developers who write their build files on their virtual card punches.
 <li>Conditions. Take a look at the &lt;condition&gt; tag to see what you can
 look for, then at &lt;waitfor&gt; to use the same tests in deployment.
 Finally, notice the <tt>if</tt> and <tt>unless</tt> attributes on
 &lt;fail&gt; for easy halting of the build on a condition, without
 having to resort to conditional targets.
 </ol>

 There are many more enhancements, so we hope you will find your build
 projects easier. We have, as usual, jumped through hoops to keep
 existing builds working, even those build files that went out their way
 to not work on Java 1.4 (hint: dont ask for the classic compiler, it has
 gone away). If your build file stops working, and it isnt something listed
 on the 'changes that may break your build' part of the WHATSNEW file, or
 something we know about on bugzilla, please dont hesitate to file a new
 bug report, preferably one with a replicable test and a patch to fix the
 problem.
 <p>
 Thanks,
 <p>
 The Ant development team.
 <p>
 PS: many thanks for Magesh to being the build manager for this release!
 He has been busy since Feb/March organizing it. Magesh -you are so good
 at this you should do it next time too :)
 </body></html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title>Welcome to Ant1.5</title>
	</head>
	<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
	<h1>Welcome to Ant1.5</h1>
	Hello, and welcome to Ant1.5
	<p>
	For new users to Ant, welcome to a new way to build your software.
	<p>
	For veteran Ant users, its been, what nine months since Ant 1.4.1
	shipped, and we've been as busy enhancing it as you've been using it.
	<p>

	We know you've been using Ant, not just from the all the bug reports we
	see, but from the awards we've been getting from JavaWorld and SD Magazine
	and from the fact that it is now clearly a mainstream product. Every quality IDE,
	from the Open Source projects: Emacs, NetBeans, Eclipse, JEdit, to the
	commercial offerings such as IntelliJ IDEA and JBuilder now have high
	quality Ant integration either built in or available as a
	download. And they do that not just because it improves their products,
	giving users the best of both worlds -great editors and a great build
	process, but because Java developers are starting to expect Ant (and
	JUnit) everywhere.
	<p>
	Even in mid-2001, if you said you were using Ant in your project, people
	would stare at you. Now, as long as you are talking with Java developers
	and not management or your family and friends, people will nod, shrug
	and maybe ask you questions about build file and Ant configurations. The good
	news: Ant 1.5 includes more helpful error messages and a new
	<tt>-diagnostics</tt> command to look at your Ant installation and help work out why
	things arent working.
	<p>
	Now, when you tell people you work on Ant in your spare time,
	people used to give you very funny stares; now they ask you about how to
	set up automated build processes, or deploy to some random app server.
	The good news: Ant 1.5 makes it easier to answer those questions.

	The other sign of mainstream is that there are also books on the
	subject, first Java Tools for Extreme Programming, then Ant: The
	Definitive Guide, and the first Ant1.5 book, Java Development with Ant,
	due to ship at the end of the month. (Steve says: I prefer the one with
	my name on the cover as co-author, but I'm biased).
	As usual, the manual has improved too:
	regardless of whether you need a book to work with Ant or not, you need
	that on-line documentation. And as usual, any extra contributions to the
	docs are welcome indeed.
	<p>
	Ant has also influenced how projects are built. Now when you download
	any open source project, or work with a closed source team, you expect
	to see a file called build.xml there. Equally important, you expect that
	build file to compile and run a set of tests using JUnit or a derivative
	thereof; if they are missing, you worry.
	<p>
	Together, Ant and JUnit have transformed the mainstream process for
	building and deploying Java projects. And that's pretty profound, when
	you think about it. What is equally impressive is that this was all done
	as a co-operative effort. Nobody works on Ant full-time; everybody uses
	it to solve their problems, to address their build crises and generally
	get something done in a hurry. It just so happens that the architectural
	model of Java classes bound via introspection to the XML build file
	makes it easy for people to add new tasks, extend existing ones and
	generally ease their way into developing and extending Ant. It is the
	users that have helped Ant become the success it is today, and will keep
	it that way tomorrow.
	<p>
	<h2>What has changed</h2>
	<p>
	So, what is new in Ant1.5? Lots of stuff. You will have to look at the
	<a href="WHATSNEW">whatsnew</a> file to see, but basically the changes
	fall into a number of categories
	<ol>
	<li>Bug fixes. We know, some things were broken in 1.4. In ant1.5 we
	have moved the bugs, fixing the ones we could, and no doubt adding
	different ones. Hopefully the total bug count has decreased.
	<li>Scalability. Changes in <ant> and a few other tasks should
	make it easier to write large, scalable build files.
	<li>Deployment. Take a look at the new <serverdeploy> task, add support
	for your server if it isnt there. Tomcat 4.1 has its own deployment
	tasks incidentally -fetch them from the tomcat pages.
	<li>Ease of use. We have added new attributes to make the archive tasks
	consistent with each other, new error messages for common problems (you
	get a screenful of help when a task wont instantiate, for example), and
	generally try and be helpful. As usual, we will accept contributions to
	the documentation or the code for even more helpfulness. Hey, in ant1.5
	you dont need to double escape the $ sign to preserve it in a string!
	<li>Java 1.4 support. We build and test fine on Java 1.4, and have the
	extensions to javac needed to build code with assertions in. We should
	point out that we have more work to do in this area: if someone wants to
	write an <assertionset> datatype to give users control of which assertions
	to enable, and patch this in to things like the <junit> and
	<java> tasks, things would get very interesting.
	<li>Continuous builds. Automated build tools are becoming more widely
	used; fork options on <javac> and <javadoc> are there to
	stop memory use growth on a continuous process.
	<li>New platforms: MacOS X for owners of those cute little laptops,
	Novell Netware servers, and even z/OS and OS/390 for mainframe
	developers who write their build files on their virtual card punches.
	<li>Conditions. Take a look at the <condition> tag to see what you can
	look for, then at <waitfor> to use the same tests in deployment.
	Finally, notice the <tt>if</tt> and <tt>unless</tt> attributes on
	<fail> for easy halting of the build on a condition, without
	having to resort to conditional targets.
	</ol>

	There are many more enhancements, so we hope you will find your build
	projects easier. We have, as usual, jumped through hoops to keep
	existing builds working, even those build files that went out their way
	to not work on Java 1.4 (hint: dont ask for the classic compiler, it has
	gone away). If your build file stops working, and it isnt something listed
	on the 'changes that may break your build' part of the WHATSNEW file, or
	something we know about on bugzilla, please dont hesitate to file a new
	bug report, preferably one with a replicable test and a patch to fix the
	problem.
	<p>
	Thanks,
	<p>
	The Ant development team.
	<p>
	PS: many thanks for Magesh to being the build manager for this release!
	He has been busy since Feb/March organizing it. Magesh -you are so good
	at this you should do it next time too :)
	</body></html>