I've just set up a new home page for the Ant Script Library here: http://www.exubero.com/asl/index.html There's still a lot to do in terms of documenting the scripts, but I was able to create this handy visualisation of the ASL target dependencies: (This image was generated by yEd - thanks yWorks!)

I've uploaded an updated version of the Ant Script Library. It contains support for executable jars, wars, and Apache Ivy. It can be downloaded here: http://www.exubero.com/asl/ant-script-library-1.0.1.zip I'm getting around to writing more complete documentation for how to use these, but for the moment I wanted to explain the considerations behind design of these scripts (referred … Continue reading Design Principles for the Ant Script Library →

I always seem to re-implement the same Ant scripts where ever I go. To try an short-circuit this pointless bit of re-work, I've re-implemented the scripts (again) in my own time, and am packaging them up for generate release under the Apache license, allowing me to properly reuse these scripts. I've uploaded them here: You … Continue reading Ant Script Library →

If you don't want to read through the rest of this posting, here's the conclusion: if you're developing Java applications in Eclipse, you need to give Ivy DE a go. It very elegantly integrates any dependencies declared in a pom.xml or ivy.xml into the Eclipse classpath. (Yes, that's right: it handles Maven pom.xml files just … Continue reading IvyDE Rocks →

Ant is a fairly mature software build system. I use Ant in pretty much all of my Java projects. Maven is a newer alternative to Ant that has been gaining mindshare over recent years. As such, a collegue recently asked me why don't we use Maven instead of Ant? On the surface, Maven appears to … Continue reading Why I Prefer Ant Over Maven →

I'm kicking myself regarding this one: although I was working for six months sitting within a backwards bitch slap of Hugh Reid, I didn't really have a proper look at the Ant build system he was setting up. Luckily, on my very last day in the office, Hugh showed me his write up about his … Continue reading Ant Build Components →

Last year I put together a few training slides to allow me to present a course on Ant to a group of people and other assorted creatures. I've finally got around to putting these notes online as a new resource on Exubero: Introduction to Ant. Hopefully, these will be useful to anyone trying to learn … Continue reading Introduction to Ant →

Mike Clark mentioned my Ant dependencies article on Pragmatic Automation last week. For a low traffic site such as Exubero, it's easy to look in the referrer logs to see how that reference has spread to various other blogs. I was relatively surprised about the effect that social bookmarking has on propagating ideas. I haven't … Continue reading Pragmatic Automation and Social Bookmarking →

I've written a new article on managing Project Dependencies using Ant. From the overview: This article discusses a technique for managing the build order of separate sub-projects in a large software system purely using task dependencies within Ant scripts. Unlike other solutions, this technique for managing dependencies does not need any external tasks to those … Continue reading Project Dependencies Using Ant →