In 2003, Eric M. Burke published an article at OnJava called Top 15 Ant Best Practices. Are the practices still relevant? What has changed in the last 4 years? In this series I’ll be reviewing each one and trying to find out.
1 of 15: Adopt consistent style
2 of 15: Put the build file at the root of your project
3 of 15: Prefer a single buildfile
4 of 15: Provide good help
5 of 15: Provide a clean target
6 of 15: Manage dependencies with Ant
7 of 15: Define and reuse paths
8 of 15: Define proper target dependencies
9 of 15: Use properties for configurability
10 of 15: Keep the build process self contained
11 of 15: Use version control
12 of 15: Use Ant as the least common denominator
13 of 15: Use zipfileset
14 of 15: The clean test
15 of 15: Avoid platform-specific wrapper scripts


6 Comments
Great stuff – I’ve added your link to my Ant wiki of resources:
http://www.thecrumb.com/wiki/Ant
Just what the doctor prescribed!
Love this, going up into my bookmarks toolbar.
Jim and Evgeny: Thanks for your supportive comments! It’s encouraging!
Best,
Julian.
Very useful.. clear and concise tips to avoid pitfalls.
Very useful writeup..Thanks.
Very good summarisation of the best practices. I was new to ANT and this was very helpful.
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