Ant Defined

Apache defines Ant as follows:

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

They further emphasize that Ant was created because Ant's original author was not satisfied with the limitations of existing build tools when developing software across multiple platforms. Existing build tools were inherently shell-based and provided substantial capabilities for extension, but because they were shell-based, they were too tightly coupled with the operating system in which they were run. This means that building software targeted at multiple platforms requires separate build tools for each deployment platform.

They continue,

"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."

In short, Ant is an extensible XML-based build tool that runs in a Java Virtual Machine, which permits it to run seamlessly on any platform with a supported JVM. And any functionality that is missing from Ant can be built through a Java-based extensible interface, which will greatly aid us when integrating performance testing into our builds.