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- <document>
-
- <properties>
- <author email="">Conor MacNeill</author>
- <author email="stefan.bodewig@freenet.de">Stefan Bodewig</author>
- <title>Welcome</title>
- </properties>
-
- <body>
- <section name="Ant 1.8.0RC1">
- <h3>January 12, 2010 - Ant 1.8.0RC1 Available</h3>
- <p>
- Apache Ant 1.8.0RC1 is now available for
- <a href="http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi">download</a>
- .
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>a new top level element extension-point allows build files to be
- extended with custom targets more easily</li>
- <li>if and unless attributes will be evaluated according to the
- values of the properties entered
- if these properties evaluate to true, false, on, off</li>
- <li>Ant now requires Java 1.4 or later</li>
- <li>new task include provides an alternative to <import> that
- should be preferred when you don't want to override any targets</li>
- <li>numerous bug fixes and improvements as documented in Bugzilla
- and in WHATSNEW</li>
- </ul>
- <p>While in open source projects a final release date strongly depends
- on the free time of the volunteers/committers, the final release is
- expected one to two months maximum after this RC. So Ant 1.8.0 is
- expected between mid February and mid March 2010.</p>
- </section>
- <section name="Ivy 2.1.0">
- <h3>October 8, 2009 - Apache Ivy 2.1.0 Released</h3>
- <p>Apache Ivy 2.1.0 is now available for download as source or binary (with and without
- dependencies) from
- <a href="http://ant.apache.org/ivy/download.cgi">http://ant.apache.org/ivy/download.cgi</a>.</p>
-
- <p>Key features of the 2.1.0 release are</p>
- <ul>
- <li>enhanced Maven2 compatibility, with several bug fixes and
- more pom features covered</li>
- <li>new options for the Ivy Ant tasks and commandline</li>
- <li>configuration intersections and configuration groups</li>
- <li>numerous bug fixes and improvements as documented in Jira
- and in the release notes</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>For more information see
- the <a href="http://ant.apache.org/ivy/">Ivy home page</a>.</p>
- </section>
-
-
- <section name="AntUnit 1.1">
- <h3>September 26, 2008 - Apache AntUnit 1.1 Released</h3>
-
- <p>Apache AntUnit 1.1 Beta is now available for download as <a
- href="http://ant.apache.org/antlibs/bindownload.cgi">binary</a>
- or <a
- href="http://ant.apache.org/antlibs/srcdownload.cgi">source</a>
- release.</p>
-
- <p>In addition to a few bugfixes and some new assertions AntUnit
- 1.1 allows test listeners to receive the log output of the
- project under test. Both plainlistener and xmllistener have
- an option that makes them echo the project's output into their
- respective logs.</p>
-
- <p>For more information see the <a href="antlibs/antunit/">Antlib's
- home page</a></p>
- </section>
-
- <section name="Apache Ivy is an Ant Sub-Project Now!">
- <h3>October 11, 2007 - Apache Ivy is an Ant Sub-Project Now!</h3>
-
- <p>Apache Ivy, "A Java based tool for tracking, resolving and
- managing project dependencies.", just finished <a
- href="http://incubator.apache.org/">Incubation</a> and has joined
- the Ant project. More information will be available from the Ant
- site soon.</p>
-
- <p>Until we've finished the migration, you can learn more about
- Ivy from its <a href="http://incubator.apache.org/ivy/">Incubator
- website</a>.</p>
- </section>
-
-
- <section name="Apache Ant">
-
- <p>
- Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like
- Make, but without Make's wrinkles.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Why another build tool when there is already <em>make</em>, <em>gnumake</em>,
- <em>nmake</em>, <em>jam</em>, and
- others? Because all those tools have limitations that Ant's 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, then
- execute commands not unlike what you would issue in 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.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- 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 have yet another format to use and remember.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Ant is different. Instead of a model where it is extended with shell-based
- commands, Ant 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 that implements a particular
- Task interface.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent by being
- able to construct a shell command such as
- <code>`find . -name foo -exec rm {}`</code>, 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
- <code><exec></code> task that
- allows different commands to be executed based on the OS that it is executing
- on.
- </p>
-
- </section>
-
- <section name="Documentation">
-
- <p>
- You can view the documentation for the current release (Apache Ant 1.8.0RC1)
- <a href="manual/index.html">online</a>
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Comprehensive documentation is included in the source and binary distributions.
- </p>
-
- </section>
-
- <!--section name="Nightly Builds">
- <p>
- If you wish to use the latest Ant features, you can try downloading a nightly
- build from <a href="http://brutus.apache.org/~nightlybuild/builds/ant/">here</a>
- </p>
-
- </section-->
-
- <section name="Get Involved">
- <ul>
- <li><a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/getinvolved/getinvolvedindex.html">Get Involved</a></li>
- <li><a href="mail.html">Join Mailing Lists</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ant-dev&r=1&w=2">Search the Dev Mailing List</a>
- </li>
- <li><a href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ant-user&r=1&w=2">Search the User Mailing List</a>
- </li>
- </ul>
-
-
-
- </section>
-
- </body>
- </document>
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