# About Antidote

Version 0.1 (2001/02/13)

Authors: Simeon H.K. Fitch

## Overview

Antidote is the Ant subproject for developing a graphical user interface to facilitate the efficient use of Ant. In general, its purpose is to allow the quick generation, modification, and use of Ant build files, helping the user define a build process and track down build problems. It is not meant to be an IDE, but an enabler for the powerful features available in Ant, particularlyl for novice users, or users who want a rapid way of controlling their build process.

## Status

Antidote is still in the early stages of development, but does have a set of usable features, including:

- Reading Ant build files.
- Selecting targets and executing them.
- Context highlighted build status console.
- Modification of (some) build file components.
- Saving modified build file.

Current development tasks include:

- A more complete set of target and task editing capabilities.
- A wizard for creating basic build files, including importing existing code bases.
- Better build progress monitoring.

The Antidote source distribution comes with requirements and design documentation that better cover the details of application architecture, how to develop against it, and what the long term goals are. Furthermore, there is a `TODO` file listing the detailed, near-term tasks that need accomplishing.

## Getting Involved

The source code for Antidote is included with the CVS version of Ant, starting in the directory jakarta-ant/src/antidote. All the existing documentation can be found there where new contributors should read:

- Design Overview
- Feature List
- Idea Refinement
- New Module HOWTO
- Static Class Diagrams

Online discussions about Antidote occur on the jakarta-ant mailing list. The application infrastructure is fairly complete, but there are almost unlimited oppotunities for feature contributions.

Asipring contributors new to the Jakarta Project should (carefully) read the following for details on the contribution process:

- Get Involved
- Project Guidelines
- Source Repositories (how to contribute patches)

Copyright © 2000 Apache Software Foundation. All rights Reserved.