Ant on windows?

[jtwhite]

Does anyone know how I can get Ant on Windows Vista (for java)?

[4xware]

Please visit http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi for the standalone package.

Personally me use Ant integrated into Eclipse on Vista.

[jtwhite]

I see no .exe files?

[4xware]

I see no .exe files?

Definitely no .exe.
You should use the JAR file (lib/ant.jar) directly or via a batch file in the bin directory.

[xav0989]

There are no .exe files in ant since it's a java program. When you double-click the jar file, the java byte-code JIT compiler is fired up and executes the ant program. If there would be .exe files, such as in Eclipse, there would be a need for a greater number of different package: one for windows, one for Linux, one for BSD, one for Mac, etc.

[xaoskitty]

...ei paps.., what is that "ANT"..?

[xav0989]

Ant is a Java program meant to automate certain task that are made while developing applications. Well that was the initial goal. Now it is not restricted to application developing, although it's most used in that case.
Its uses include cleaning an application's source code before compiling, calling the compiler, sending and receiving files through FTP and many more.

Introduction

Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like make, without make's wrinkles.
Why?

Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam, 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 on 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.

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.

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.

Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent in being able to construct a shell command such as `find . -name foo -exec rm {}`, 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 <exec> task that allows different commands to be executed based on the OS it is executing on.