ANT

ANT Set-up

1.      Download ANT from here

2.      Set ANT_HOME  using the same process as that of setting TESTNG_HOME, but pointing to ANT jar.

3.      Validate ANT version by running ‘ant - version’ in the command prompt

Understanding build.xml

Build.xml is the most important component of Ant build tool. For a Java project, all cleaning, setup, compilation and deployment related task are mentioned in this file in XML format. When we execute this XML file using command line or any IDE plugin, all instructions written into this file will get executed in sequential manner.

Let's understand the code within a sample build.XML

• Project tag is used to mention a project name and basedir attribute. The basedir is the root directory of an application. Project is the starting point of the Ant configuration file and consists of the entire configuration with respect to building a project

1	<project name="YourProjectName" basedir=".">

• Property tags are used as variables in build.XML file to be used in further steps. They are an important way to customize a build process or to provides way to define shortcuts to reuse repeatedly inside a build file

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<property name="build.dir" value="${basedir}/build"/> <property name="external.jars" value=".\resources"/> <property name="YourProjectName.dir" value="${external.jars}/YourProjectName"/> <property name="src.dir"value="${basedir}/src"/>

• A target is a set of tasks that that you want to execute during the build process. You can have multiple targets in a single build.xml

1	<target name="setClassPath">

• path tag is used to bundle all files logically which are in the common location

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<path id="classpath_jars">

• pathelement tag will set the path to the root of common location where all files are stored

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<pathelement path="${basedir}/"/>

• pathconvert tag used to convert paths of all common file inside path tag to system's classpath format

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<pathconvert pathsep=";" property="test.classpath" refid="classpath_jars"/>

• fileset tag used to set classpath for different third party jar in our project

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<fileset dir="${YourProjectName.dir}" includes="*.jar"/>

• Echo tag is used to print text on the console

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<echo message="deleting existing build directory"/>

• Delete tag will clean data from given folder

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<delete dir="${build.dir}"/>  

• mkdir tag will create a new directory

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<mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>

• javac tag used to compile java source code and move .class files to a new folder

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<javac destdir="${build.dir}" srcdir="${src.dir}">
<classpath refid="classpath_jars"/>
</javac>

• jar tag will create jar file from .class files

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<jar destfile="${YourProjectName.dir}/YourProjectName.jar" basedir="${build.dir}">

•  manifest tag will set your main class for execution

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<manifest>
                   <attribute name="Main-Class" value="test.Main"/>
</manifest>

• 'depends' attribute used to make one target to depend on another target

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<target name="run" depends="compile">

•  java tag will execute main function from the jar created in compile target section

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<java jar="${ytoperation.dir}/YourProjectName.jar" fork="true"/>

Generate build file in IDE:

Select File -> click on Export -> General -> Ant Buildfiles and specify the file name, project, etc as per your needs.

When executing, you may encounter an issue as 'tools.jar' does not exists. This is because, You have installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE) instead of the Java Development Kit (JDK). JRE doesn't have a tools.jar, We need to set JAVA_HOME and PATH variables and point to JDK, not to JRE.
When you run an Ant build from Eclipse by right clicking and selecting Ant Build, you should see a message as ''BUILD SUCCESSFUL" as below:

Buildfile: D:\Ant\SampleAntProject\build.xml
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 903 milliseconds